While the team at Xbox have finally been a little more vocal about their upcoming slate of games recently — namely in the form of Xbox Developer Direct and future showcase announcements — it turns out that the platform's marketing push, generally speaking, could actually be reduced in future.
According to Andy Robinson of games outlet VGC, Xbox has "reduced" its marketing budget for future events in the wake of recent layoffs at parent company Microsoft.
The reporter points out that whilst his initial comment of "no marketing budget" was exaggerated somewhat, he believes that it is true that Xbox has reduced its future marketing budgets in some fashion.
For now, we're not sure what form this move would take, if the reporting here is accurate. We know that the company is planning its Starfield Developer Direct and an Xbox Summer Showcase, and we'd expect those two events to go ahead of course.
These are in-house projects and as such the company would likely save money in comparison to attending a third-party event. This could be part of the reason why, for now at least, Microsoft will seemingly be absent from this year's E3 show.
Of course, that's up in the air at the moment and we don't have any official confirmation that Xbox's marketing budgets are affecting any E3 or other trade show plans. Whatever happens elsewhere, we're still very much looking forward to Xbox's upcoming in-house events.