What Happened

Game Rant broke the news this week: Asha Sharma, the new head of Microsoft’s gaming division, has officially retired the ‘Microsoft Gaming’ corporate brand introduced during the Phil Spencer era and consolidated everything back under ‘Xbox.’ The change is more than a logo swap. Sharma reportedly has been making rapid structural moves since taking the role, and the rebrand signals a pivot away from the holding-company identity that accompanied the Activision-Blizzard acquisition toward a sharper consumer-facing pitch. Internally, teams that used to report into the Microsoft Gaming org are now being reorganized under Xbox-branded units. Externally, marketing, storefronts, and first-party publishing will all carry the Xbox identity again, including titles that previously shipped under Activision, Blizzard, or Bethesda labels. The messaging is clear: one brand, one platform, one face to gamers.

Industry Impact

This rebrand reshapes the competitive narrative heading into the back half of the console generation. The ‘Microsoft Gaming’ name, while accurate as a corporate structure, had blurred consumer perception just as Xbox needed clarity the most — hardware sales have lagged PlayStation for two generations, and Game Pass growth has cooled. Sharma’s bet is that the Xbox brand still carries enough residual strength to re-anchor the division. Expect tighter, more consumer-direct marketing within 90 days, a consolidated Xbox storefront identity, and possibly a simplified Game Pass tier structure. For rivals, the move telegraphs that Microsoft is done apologizing for its gaming presence. For investors, the rebrand is also a cost and accountability signal — fewer overlapping leadership structures, clearer P&L lines, less Activision-era bureaucratic drag.

The Bigger Picture

Corporate rebrands inside tech giants are rarely aesthetic — they’re almost always strategic resets. Sharma’s Xbox move slots into a broader pattern of Microsoft pruning the sprawl it accumulated during the AI-first reorgs of 2024 and 2025. Simplifying the gaming division’s identity is also a talent move: a crisp, confident Xbox brand recruits better than an awkward ‘Microsoft Gaming’ umbrella that sounded like a compliance entity. For entrepreneurs reading this, the playbook is worth copying: when you acquire multiple sub-brands, resist the urge to hide your strongest label underneath a neutral parent name. Customers buy the brand they recognize. The strongest equity in Microsoft’s entire gaming portfolio has always been four letters — and Sharma just cashed it in.

The Takeaway

Xbox is back, Microsoft Gaming is out, and the message to PlayStation, to investors, and to the player base is the same: Microsoft is done being shy about its flagship. Expect a more aggressive, more focused, more Xbox-branded 12 months ahead.

Reporting based on public industry coverage. Read the original article for full context.

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The information published on the Xbox website shows that the game Ark 2 will be released in 2022 and as a console exclusive on the Xbox Series X and Series S consoles. Also, the trailer shown at The Game Awards 2020 was in-engine and it has some of the features you can expect.

Another point that we should mention is that Vin Diesel himself is one of the producers of this title. Apparently, he was a fan of the first version and played it for about 1000 hours.

Studio Wildcard’s sandbox game Ark 2 received a short teaser trailer during the Xbox and Bethesda event. Unfortunately, along with this trailer, we also saw the delay of the game. Instead of 2022, Ark 2 will be released in 2023. The good news is that the game will be available on Xbox Game Pass from launch day. Vin Diesel fights for survival as Santiago.

The Game Awards event

The Game Awards event is one of the most-watched and popular events in the video game industry. It has always been of interest to the audience and game makers. Even after the end of the event, it has been talked about in-game circles for a long time. Undoubtedly, one of the most interesting events of this ceremony was watching Mr. Vin Diesel in the role of Ark 2.

A cinematic trailer of the game was released in collaboration with IGN. In this trailer, we saw the presence of dinosaurs and humans, as well as primitive and modern weapons. The name of Mr. Van Diesel’s character is Santiago, and this information is all that we know about the game. Before the release of this trailer, the production of a serial animation related to the world of the game was also confirmed.

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The past of Playstation and Xbox

For many years Sony pretty much held the title of the “best” console following the launch of the first Playstation consoles and the subsequent update. However, when Microsoft introduced the first iteration of the Xbox a year after Sony launched the PlayStation 2, the world of console gaming would never be the same again.

Since then, it has been an endless game of one-upmanship between the two contenders. This is the case even though Sony seems to win consistently when looking solely at the market share. That said, the debate is always heated and consumers will always pit the two against each other. Because people are competitive by nature and we always want to be sure that we are getting the best for our money.

So when it comes to comparing consoles or any other competing products for that matter, it invariably leads to a comparison of their inner workings. The same goes for the Sony PS5 and the Xbox Series X.

PS5 v Xbox Series X, the titans go head to head

Looking at the technology that runs the PS5 and Xbox X, both competitors came ready to bruise and are quite evenly matched. Both companies chose to stay with chipmaker AMD on their latest offerings.

The PS5

The PS5 uses a third-generation variant of AMD’s Ryzen CPU, an 8 core chip that has been tailored to Sony’s exact desires.

The story is very much the same when it comes to the GPU. It is a tailored version of the Radeon Navi which supports ray-tracing and 3D audio simulation. When coupled with the PS5’s 16GB of GDDR6 RAM, players have up to 10.28 teraFLOPs at their disposal.

As for storage space, the PS5 ships with an 825 GB SSD (Solid State Drive) that runs at 5.5GB per second, which makes for some ultra-fast loading times.

Xbox Series X

Much like the competition, Microsoft’s work with partnership with AMD was an endeavor to customize components to suit the latest version of Xbox.

The Xbox also features an 8 core CPU, however, this version clocks higher at 3.8GHz – a tad higher than the Sony PS5’s 3.5GHz.

The GPU that Microsoft runs in the latest Xbox also leaves the PS5 wanting. More specifically Xbox Series X buyers have up to 12 teraFLOPs hidden “under the hood” that are paired with an exact match of 16GB GDDR6 RAM.

To top it off, the Xbox SX comes standard with an impressive 1TB SSD That runs at 2.4GB per second. If that is not enough for you, all you need to do is get your hands on an Xbox Series X Storage Expansion Card to get yourself another 1TB of storage.

Tallying up the score of PS5 vs Xbox X

When looking at the figures, the Xbox Series X has a clear hardware advantage over the Playstation 5. However, a closer inspection might reveal a few more important facts.

For one, the Xbox SX’s CPU figures only reach that high when the simultaneous multithreading feature is active, the gap between the two is otherwise a marginal one.

The GPU differences are another point worth paying a little extra attention to. Though Xbox Series X owners can boast about the higher teraFLOP figures, they might not really matter all that much beyond the platform’s exclusive titles like Gears of War.

That said, the asking price for the two competitors is similar – both with an MSRP of $500. So the question of which of the two is “better” is a very personal one, most probably determined by brand loyalty and which exclusive games one cannot go without playing.

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Most of us are already aware of what the Xbox is and for those of you who do not know, it is a video game console created by Microsoft. Microsoft has launched five successive gaming consoles. Let us see a brief note of the journey of the Xbox from day 1. The name Xbox has an interesting derivation. It signifies Microsoft’s graphics API, which was called DirectX and the term Xbox is actually a contraction of Microsoft’s own graphics API.

JOURNEY OF XBOX: 

The original Xbox console was launched in the year 2001 and this was how Microsoft stepped into the gaming industry. When launched, it was directly in competition with PlayStation 2, Dreamcast, and Gamecube by the companies Sony, Sega, and Nintendo respectively.

Later on, Xbox Live was launched in the year 2002. This technology allowed users to play online games with a broadband connection. Although, Dreamcast and Play Station 2 also had their own online gaming facilities, Xbox’s quality was unmatched.

Just when people thought nothing could be better, came the release of the Xbox 360. With Sony upgrading to the Play Station 3 and Nintendo’s innovation of the Wii, Xbox had to do something to keep them in the race. Hence, the launch of the Xbox 360. It was the seventh generation of gaming consoles launched in the year 2005. The popularity was so high from day one and this also had a Live service expansion. More than just gaming, users could also stream other sources of entertainment using the upgraded version. By June 2010, Microsoft resigned the model of Xbox 360 and made the console a lot slimmer than its previous version. Additional facilities like Wi-Fi, optical audio output, and 5 USB ports were available in the upgraded version. In 2019, even though it has been nearly 14 years since the launch of the Xbox 360, the Xbox 360 is still getting updates from Microsoft.

Years passed on, and on November 2013, Xbox One was launched. This version clashed with the launch of Sony’s Play Station 4. Gamers were confused as to which one to buy, both being debatably great options. Each one offered services that the other didn’t. This eighth-generation gaming console also competed with Nintendo’s Wii U and Switch. Xbox One is aimed at providing a lot more internet-based features to gamers. It even enables you to record your gameplay and watch it later.

The succeeding versions of the Xbox One, also known as the Xbox One S and Xbox One X were launched in the year 2016 and 2017, respectively. It was a slimmer model of the existing console.

Though it started out small, the journey of Xbox has been an incredible one. Each milestone that it has achieved is a star-studded addition to the previous one. The aim of Xbox has only been one clear thing right from its start. That is, to provide maximum entertainment to its users. My personal take is that Xbox has definitely succeeded in this mission, don’t you agree?

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