Having lost another console generation, Microsoft’s Xbox team is now trying to rebrand its console-based gaming experience as an entirely new console-less endeavor.
Four years into Microsoft’s Xbox Series console has seen modest adoption compared to its rivals this generation. As Xbox Series consoles continue to lag behind sales of the Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 5, Microsoft is now pivoting to rebrand its gaming experience by highlighting its strongest feature which is its hardware-independent accessibility.
In a new Xbox marketing campaign dubbed “This Is an Xbox”, Microsoft attempts to identify the Xbox as an experience that “invites people to play with Xbox across multiple devices and screens.”
The Xbox team would like to remind gamers that they can also play their favorites on not only Xbox consoles but PCs, Samsung Smart TVs, phones, Amazon Fire TV, and Meta Quest headsets via Game Pass subscriptions.
To cement the notion of what an Xbox is, the marketing team will simultaneously run the whimsical marketing effort “This is Not an Xbox” around with what the Xbox gaming experience is not, using absurd comparisons such a Cat or Bento Box to contrast in locations such as Atlamta, Berlin, Brisbane, Chicago, London, San Francisco, Sydney, and New York.
To help illustrate the flexibility and accessibility of Xbox gaming the company also issued this 33-second-long ad which highlights the various ways gamers can play games that includes on phones, PCs, handhelds and smart TVs.
Microsoft is looking to partner with various brands such as Porsche, Crocs, The Happy Egg Co, and Samsung to help propagate its new brand image across various media that includes billboards at Time Square in New York city.
The Xbox team will also leverage its own Gear Shop to sell merch like phone cases, hoodies, t-shirts, and stickers emboldened with the new branding phrase of ‘This is An Xbox’.
Whether or not Microsoft is successful at convincing the gaming community to unburden the brand of constant console-for-console sales comparisons to Sony and Nintendo in favor of a more amorphous experience that plays into its hand of cloud gaming remains an unknown right now.
However, this could be the tip of a glacial shift in the way gaming is marketed soon where content is less determined by the triangulated hardware prowess and exclusivity deals of Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo.
