Xbox executives Asha Sharma and Matt Booty outline their plans for the future of Game Pass

The team at Xbox has been hard at work recently trying to revive the brand and clean up its image. Ever since the new boss, Asha Sharma, took over from Phil Spencer in February, there has been a wave of changes at Xbox. Part of it may be the hiring of a new reputation manager, but the new branding and logo have quickly become a fan favorite. Sharma has also changed the "Microsoft Gaming" branding back to Xbox.

Perhaps the most interesting change in Sharma's short tenure as CEO has been to Game Pass, with the Ultimate edition receiving a price cut to $22.99 a month. Moreover, a Discord partnership has been leaked with a cross-subscription model between Discord Nitro and Xbox Game Pass Starter Edition.

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To expand on the future of Game Pass, Xbox Executives Asha Sharma and Matt Booty gave an interview to The Game File on the 23rd of April. Sharma said that the recent price drop of Game Pass Ultimate was the first step towards attracting a long-term player base. The team at Xbox is apparently considering making Game Pass more affordable and evaluating how value looks in today's gaming scene.

Chief Content Officer of Xbox, Matt Booty, was adamant that the team would always "aim for quality" when talking about Xbox Game Studios. The Xbox execs also laid out their plans for console hardware, with Sharma saying that Xbox Gaming is focusing on three things: performance, reliability, and quality. However, no long-term decisions have yet been made regarding Project Helix's hardware, given the volatile industry situation.

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It seems like Xbox Gaming is taking two different routes when it comes to games and consoles. On the games side, they are heavily pushing Game Pass and trying to make it more affordable. Meanwhile, the Xbox Project Helix next-gen console is unlikely to be affordable, with some industry experts predicting a $ 1,000 launch price. That would seem likely given Sharma's words of a "first-class experience" and the predicted performance of the console.