Microsoft removes its 'This is an Xbox' marketing campaign and is slowly purging all mention of it

Near the latter half of 2024, Microsoft boldly claimed nearly anything could be an Xbox. Your mobile phone, your gaming handheld, your smart TV, your car seat screen. Heck, maybe even a really smart, smart fridge could be your Xbox. Now, in the wake of announcing a new Xbox console-PC hybrid, Microsoft has not only removed that ad campaign but has gone some way to remove all traces of it.

As noted by Game Developer, the original announcement of the 'This is an Xbox' campaign has now been taken offline. Notably, the tag on the Xbox site also leads to a 404. Yesterday, the latter was live, which suggests that Microsoft is still cleaning up pages it may not have caught.

One area I've spotted with the branding still live is the Xbox YouTube channel. It has a flashy thirty-second ad that has picked up 2.4 million views. Predictably, the comments aren't the kindest: "From 360 era to this, wtf happened?"

Accessing the original "This is an Xbox" announcement via an archive, it states, "At Xbox, we’re building a future defined by player choice—where people can play their favorite games, discover new adventures, and connect with friends, wherever and however they love to play."

Effectively, the "This is an Xbox" ad is one intended to support Xbox's Cloud gaming ecosystem, where you can play many Xbox Game Pass games from non-Xbox devices. This builds into Microsoft's long-term strategy of feeling less like a traditional console and more like a hybrid.

Xbox Studios games also come to PC and PlayStation, and the next Xbox is said to be using Windows 11. Effectively, Microsoft appears to be migrating into more of a third-party developer with bespoke, almost gaming PCs.

One of the strangest knock-on effects of this advertising campaign is that customers could buy shirts, phone cases, and hoodies that had "This is an Xbox" emblazoned on them. That means they are walking around with an advert on their chest, which even Xbox is slowly culling from its own website. The 'This is an Xbox' era was a particularly strange place, with Microsoft even advertising car seat screens with the Xbox branding.

I've historically not been the biggest fan of this campaign, as I think it misses what makes consoles so special. They are bespoke machines with little ecosystems and exclusive games. When Sony and Nintendo give so much more for the money that my gaming PC can't effectively copy, I see little reason to ever buy an Xbox.

The removal of this branding doesn't mean Xbox has seen the error of its ways and is backtracking on cloud commitments. It seems more likely that Microsoft is rolling out the red carpet for Project Helix, given that we actually have concrete facts about the next Xbox device now. Anything can be an Xbox, but Microsoft will want to let you know the next Xbox is even more Xboxier than other Xboxes.