- Primary Subject: Xbox
- Key Update: New Chief Strategy Officer Matthew Ball says reviving classic Xbox franchises and strengthening the console business will be key priorities moving forward
- Status: Confirmed
- Last Verified: May 22, 2026
- Quick Answer: Xbox's new strategy leadership says reviving legacy Xbox franchises is a priority, but no specific games have been officially announced. Fans have since speculated about dormant series such as Banjo-Kazooie, Viva Piñata, Crimson Skies, Phantom Dust, and MechAssault, though Microsoft has not confirmed any of them are currently being revived.
Xbox's new Chief Strategy Officer Matthew Ball recently said that reviving storied franchises and strengthening Xbox's console business will be among his priorities moving forward.
On the surface, that sounds like a fairly standard executive statement. Every gaming company talks about its legacy franchises sooner or later, and every platform holder wants stronger hardware sales.
The more I thought about Ball's comments, however, the more they felt like an acknowledgment of a problem Xbox has been trying to solve for years.
Haven't Xbox's Acquisitions Already Solved This Problem?
If Microsoft's strategy over the last decade has proven anything, it's that the company has never been afraid to spend money to strengthen its position in gaming.
The acquisitions of Bethesda and Activision Blizzard dramatically expanded Xbox's portfolio and gave Microsoft control over some of the biggest franchises in the industry.
Call of Duty, Fallout, Diablo, Doom, Warcraft, and The Elder Scrolls now sit under the same corporate umbrella. Even writing that sentence feels slightly surreal (especially if you've been following the industry long enough to remember when those publishers were completely independent).
Few companies in gaming history have assembled a collection of intellectual property on that scale.
Yet despite all of those acquisitions, Xbox continues to talk about rebuilding momentum and strengthening its position in the console market.
Microsoft's strategy can't really be considered a failure because the acquisitions achieved their intended purpose of strengthening Xbox's development resources and content lineup.
What they didn't automatically create was a stronger emotional connection between the Xbox brand and the games people associate with it.
Xbox owns those franchises now, but ownership and association aren't necessarily the same thing. Fallout was already beloved before Microsoft acquired Bethesda.
Call of Duty had already become one of the biggest entertainment properties in the world before Activision Blizzard joined Xbox.
Diablo, Doom, and The Elder Scrolls had spent decades building their own identities and fanbases long before they became part of Microsoft's portfolio.
Those franchises undoubtedly strengthen Xbox, but they weren't originally created to define what Xbox is. Think about Nintendo for a second.
When Nintendo releases a new Mario game, nobody has to explain why it matters to the brand. Mario is Nintendo.
The same applies to Zelda, Animal Crossing, and several other franchises that have become inseparable from the company's identity.
PlayStation benefits from something similar whenever God of War, Spider-Man, Horizon, or The Last of Us returns. Those games generate revenue while reinforcing the platform's identity in players' minds.
That's why I find Ball's emphasis on classic franchises so interesting. Not because I suddenly believe a new Banjo-Kazooie is going to outsell Call of Duty or because a revival of Crimson Skies will transform the industry overnight.
If anything, I think viewing these franchises purely through the lens of sales potential misses the point entirely. Their value comes from something far more difficult to measure.
Has Xbox Lost Something Acquisitions Couldn't Replace?
Xbox once had more of that, as Halo, Fable, Gears of War, Forza, and several smaller franchises helped define different eras of the platform.
Over time, however, many of Xbox's older properties faded into the background while Microsoft's larger strategy increasingly revolved around acquisitions, subscriptions, and ecosystem growth. Those initiatives made perfect business sense, but they also shifted the conversation.
The identity of Xbox became tied more to its platform and services than to the franchises that helped build its reputation.
Maybe that's why Ball's comments resonated with me more than I expected. Reviving classic franchises isn't really about nostalgia, at least not entirely.
Nostalgia can generate excitement, but it rarely sustains a franchise on its own (gaming history is full of revivals that discovered this the hard way).
The real opportunity is that these games give Xbox a chance to strengthen parts of its identity that can't simply be acquired through a corporate transaction.
Microsoft can buy a publisher. It can buy a studio. It can buy a franchise. What it can't buy is decades of association between a platform and the experiences that helped define it.
That is also why I don't think this conversation is really about whether Banjo-Kazooie, Viva Piñata, Crimson Skies, Phantom Dust, MechAssault, or Project Gotham Racing would become Microsoft's next blockbuster franchise.
Realistically, most of them probably wouldn't. A new Banjo-Kazooie is not suddenly competing with Grand Theft Auto, and Microsoft almost certainly understands that. The value of these franchises lies elsewhere.
They remind players of a period when Xbox felt more willing to experiment with different genres, take creative risks, and build experiences that felt uniquely tied to the platform itself.
Some of those games became major successes, while others developed smaller but passionate audiences, yet together they helped shape how players viewed Xbox.
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