The Communication Vacuum Is Causing More Chaos As GameStop Tweets And Deletes Promo
The chaos for Xbox keeps on rolling, it seems. We were just talking about how years of muddled communication coming from Microsoft’s Xbox team over exclusives and game ports to other consoles is resulting in a ton of confusion and speculation among the gaming public. The responsibility for all of this lies squarely at the feet of Xbox chief Phil Spencer and his team, which have oscillated between talking out of both sides of their mouths on these exclusives, and just sitting back and not saying a single thing when the confusion shows its head. And what that also allows for is speculation and conspiracy theories when, seemingly, a 3rd party vendor simply makes an oopsie.
GameStop tweeted out a promotion the other day for a in-store demo day where the public could walk into a store and try out some games using “Game Pass,” Xbox’s game-streaming and subscription service. It’s currently called “Xbox Game Pass,” but GameStop’s tweet referred to it as “Microsoft Game Pass.” The result was immediate.
On February 7, the official GameStop Twitter/X/whatever account posted a promo image for an Xbox demo day. Seems fine enough. But when referring to Game Pass, the company used the term “Microsoft Game Pass.” This is odd. Normally, I don’t think anyone would really care. However, we ain’t in normal times right now.
A retweet from Wario64 pointing out the phrase “Microsoft Game Pass” went viral online and theories were quickly spun up, with many pointing to this as more evidence that Microsoft was planning to kill the Xbox brand or use it for hardware only. Others suggested that it was Microsoft rebranding the subscription service— which grants you access to hundreds of games for a monthly fee—so it could be used on Switch or PlayStation.
This was almost certainly a simple mistake. Microsoft has told reporters writing stories about this whole thing that it had nothing to do with the verbiage GameStop tweeted out. But this wild speculation is again the result of one thing: the vacuum the Xbox team has left in place to be filled by conspiracy theories and rumor.
And it only got worse when GameStop subsequently deleted the tweet entirely.
This, as you might expect, convinced some that it was a mistake. It also convinced some “passionate” gamers that it was actually evidence that GameStop let the cat out of the bag too early and the death of Xbox as a brand really is coming soon. The end is nigh and all that.
Anyway, the reality is that GameStop likey made a mistake. Or, someone realized that using the term “Microsoft Game Pass” right now would set off a firestorm of speculation that would lead to more coverage and online discussion of an event that, let’s be real here, would never have been covered by most places or talked about online by gamers if this whole thing hadn’t spiraled out of control.
Correct. The point isn’t that GameStop’s mistake is in and of itself a big deal. It isn’t. The point instead is that the Xbox team has completely failed to get out in front of all of this speculation, allowing everyone’s pet theories to take the place of what should have been clear and proactive communication coming out from Microsoft as to just what in the hell it has planned for the Xbox brand.
Seriously, Spencer and team: just freaking say something, for the love of god.