Whopping Xbox leak reveals company’s plans and ambitions to 2030: Video Games Industry Memo, 21/09/2023
Xbox exec team inserts heads into hands following literally well-documented blunder
Massive leak of Xbox documents blows open the company’s long-term strategy..
Unity flip-flops like an acrobat at the beach over its runtime fees policy.
Mortal Kombat 1 delivers fatalities aplenty in this week’s releases.
The big read - Whopping Xbox leak reveals company’s plans and ambitions for a decade
Xbox has suffered one of the biggest self-inflicted leaks of confidential documents in the history of the games industry.
An enormous cache of confidential documents it supplied to a court in California ahead of its next court battle with the Federal Trade Commission were accidentally made public - shining an uncomfortably bright light on the company’s plans for the coming decade.
Leaky does it
The exposed documents, which have been spread excitedly online since the cock-up occurred, broadly fall into three main categories.
The first pile of documents detailed Xbox’s hardware timeline and strategy up to 2030. Tom Warren at The Verge pulled a deck summarising this which showed plans for a new digital only Series X codenamed Brooklin, a Series S refresh due to launch next year nicknamed Ellewood, a brand new controller with accelerometer support codenamed Sebille and plans for a next generation console - with a new hybrid cloud platform powering it - to release in 2028.
Next, the leak highlighted unannounced software releases that aim to strengthen the company’s first party line-up. Chris Scullion at Video Games Chronicle picked through a document from Bethesda highlighting plans to release a third game in the Dishonored series, a new Doom title and remasters of games such as Fallout 3 - none of which had been publicly divulged up to now.
Finally, and most headache-inducing for Xbox, the cache included a cavalcade of unredacted emails that have blown open some of the most sensitive conversations taking place in the business.
These range from the vaguely embarrassing, such as Phil Spencer hypothesising about the possibility of buying Nintendo, to outright disclosure of commercial secrets such as how much the company is willing to pay publishers for Game Pass exclusivity for titles with ‘wow factor’ (spoiler alert: it’s bloody loads).
The Chamber of Secrets
A leak of this scale is deeply unusual and exceedingly damaging. Overall, the games industry is often deeply secretive about how it works - casting a fog over its work to ensure it can control the narrative around itself as effectively as possible.
But while its secrecy can be frustrating (especially to people like me who aim to explain the industry) it exists for an important, and often little considered reason; that the notoriously “fast-moving sector” is underpinned by slow-moving tectonic shifts at the upper-reaches of the industry which ensure a need for long-term discretion.
This is caused, in no small part, by the way that both software and hardware is made within the games industry. For example, the development of a flagship Triple A game regularly takes upwards of five years, with games such as Starfield taking upwards of seven years to make.
The development of new hardware takes a similarly long time, if not longer. The average lifespan of a console generation is now roughly a decade if we assume - pretty reasonably - that companies get their hands on next-gen development kits up to three years prior to a cycle concluding.
Therefore, companies operating at the highest echelons have to conceal their slate to maintain long term interest in major releases, to ensure consumers buy current generation hardware for as long as possible and to prevent rivals from capitalising on knowledge.
And while it’s true that we can make reasonable predictions about what company’s may plan to do within their slate (e.g. release an updated version of a console mid-cycle), keeping at least some of the element of surprise has been long-established as a valuable thing to do.
No surprises, please?
The Xbox leak matters because it blows open its plans publicly for years to come. In comparison to last year’s annoying but commercially insignificant leak of a work-in-progress version of Grand Theft Auto VI, Xbox has accidentally handed the world its playbook for the remainder of the decade.
It is, in short, a PR nightmare for Xbox. And unfortunately for them, there is very little that they can do about it in the weeks, months and years ahead.
In the immediate short-term, there’s no room for external finger pointing. NBC News quashed rumours that the documents may have been leaked by the FTC by confirming they were accidentally made public by a Microsoft employee - preventing them from even having the small joy of suing someone.
And while its strategic documents showed there was some room for the company to diverge on its proposed strategy, Xbox’s position as a key platform and hardware maker means it is locked into this approach for years to come - despite some half-hearted protestations from Phil Spencer to the contrary.
But for the industry at large, it throws an intriguing spanner into the way the industry usually works. For once, we all know - without relying on gossip or supposition - exactly how one of the major platforms in the sector plans to conduct itself in the coming decade.
Does unveiling the master plan and the thinking behind it definitively damage Xbox? Or could this widespread clarity oddly help it by establishing its position in the market firmly for the decade to come?
Come and check back in with us in *checks watch* seven years to find out.
News in brief
Run-away-time, Please - Unity has mostly backed down on its controversial runtime fees proposal after backlash from indie developers, boycotts from ad funded games and such negative press it ended up on the front page of the BBC News. Keep watching to see whether they fully reverse this moronic decision.
Jouer don't know what you're doing- Emmanuel Macron has backtracked on comments blaming video games for riots in Paris earlier this year, claiming that games are “an integral part of France”. In completely unrelated news, Paris Games Week - the country’s premier games trade show supported by its industry association SELL - takes place in roughly a month’s time.
UK Games Fun(d) - The UK Government has announced that it is bumping the UK Game Fund to £5m, with eligible projects able to receive £50,000-£150,000. Creative Industries Minister John Whittingdale made the announcement at games event WASD but chose to omit the fact that he reportedly beat a punter at Tekken 8 on the show floor that morning.
Triple AAApple - The new iPhone 15 Pro features an A17 chip that will let it play games like Assassin’s Creed Mirage natively with wireless control support. What’s less important: being able to play Death Stranding now. What’s more important: its potential to further dissolve boundaries between device categories in the years to come
Cyberpunk’d - Jared Shurin, author, comms do-er and VGIM aficionado, has interviewed Lavanya Lakshminarayan, a game designer and writer, ahead of the release of Jared’s collection of Cyberpunk short stories anthology. It’s both a great read to understand the increasing importance of games in the cultural conversation and great preparation for the forthcoming Cyberpunk 2077 re-roll.
In and outs
Ubisoft London (formerly Future Games of London) is shutting up shop, with 50+ industry staff seeking new roles…Electronic Arts is looking for a new Corp Comms lead to rep it in the UK and Ireland…Warner Bros is on the hunt for a Marketing Brand Producer who likes their video games.
Events and conferences
Tokyo Game Show, Tokyo - September 21st - September 24th
EGX, London - October 12th - October 15th
GamesAid Gala Dinner, London - October 17th
Scottish Games Week, Multiple locations - 30th October - 3rd November
Paris Games Week, Paris - 1st November - 5th November
Games to watch this week
Mortal Kombat 1 - Confusingly named ultra-violent brawler returns for latest gut wrenching iteration.
Payday 3 - Heist-a-la-vista, baby, in the long awaited sequel to popular multiplayer crime FPS’er.
Party Animals - Gang Beasts channeling cuddly party brawler arrives across platforms.
F-Zero 99 - Ok, it snuck out last week but it’s a free-to-play 99 player F-Zero themed battle royale so I’m just breaking my rules to include it.
Before you go…
The Pokemon Company has teamed up with the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam to create an exhibition fusing his work with a range of pocket monsters. Read Christian Donlan, one of the industry’s truly great writers, describe his excitement over the partnership in his usually warm and engaging style.