Microsoft will stop marketing Xbox consoles in Europe claims insider

GameCentralPublished Jul 11, 2024, 9:44pm

Xbox Series X and S consoles — Xbox Series X and S – not popular in Europe (Microsoft)

The major shift in Xbox strategy continues, with a new rumour suggesting that Microsoft is to give up promoting its hardware in ‘certain’ markets.

From the very start of the year, it’s been obvious that major changes are going on at Xbox and that even Microsoft isn’t sure exactly what they are. Their multiformat strategy remains confused while this week’s price rise for Game Pass, and the abandonment of day one releases on the cheapest tier, is a massive change in approach.

That may be only the half of it though, as a new rumour suggests that Microsoft will ‘stop marketing’ Xbox in ‘certain markets in EMEA’ (Europe, Middle East, and Africa), to only focus on Game Pass, cloud gaming, PC, and Xbox controllers.

We’ve already seen some evidence of that this week, with the promotion of cloud gaming via Amazon Fire sticks – with the Xbox app also already available on high-end Samsung TVs. But the suggestion is that Microsoft is to essentially give up on selling consoles outside of the Americas.

The report on The Verge is paywalled but it’s not specific about which countries will and won’t be affected. The Xbox has never sold well on the Continent though, including in major markets such as Germany and France, so it’s arguable how much difference it would make anyway.

However, the UK is the second largest market for Xbox, outside the US, so it’s hard to guess how much change it may see and whether the consoles will be deprioritised here as well.

The Verge admits they have not been able to ‘fully verify’ the story but suggests that less console hardware will be allocated to Europe as a result of the changes.

There’s no indication of whether marketing for Game Pass and the other non-console options will be more than at the moment, but one of the key complaints from European gamers is the lack of effective marketing from Microsoft in the region.

Many have also complained of poor localisation, with even things like the translation of the Xbox interface, into other languages, apparently being of a poor quality and increasingly left to AI.

From the very beginning, Microsoft has struggled to make inroads into other markets beyond North American and the UK, but while the Xbox’s poor performance in Japan is well known it’s often not appreciated how poorly it sells in many mainland European countries.

And yet only a few months ago Microsoft tried to dispel rumours that it was withdrawing from the hardware market by stating that they are, ‘moving full speed ahead on our next generation hardware, focused on delivering the biggest technological leap ever in a generation.’

That seemed bullish even before these new rumours and it’s even less clear now what they might be planning and how they intend to market a next gen console in Europe, considering the lack of success up until this point.