A required part of this site couldn’t load. This may be due to a browser
extension, network issues, or browser settings. Please check your
connection, disable any ad blockers, or try using a different browser.

“People who play Xbox love Xbox,” Bond tells Fortune. “It has a ton of meaning for them and so changing it is hard.”

That tension between a fiercely loyal base and an industry undergoing rapid evolution is shaping both Bond’s leadership approach and Xbox’s next chapter. As the company shifts from a console-centric legacy to a broader service-driven ecosystem, Bond is betting that meeting players where they are, rather than where tradition dictates they should be, will drive its future growth.

She describes the Xbox community with a kind of reverence: deeply invested, quick to celebrate, quick to criticize. That passion, she says, isn’t a liability but a source of insight and data that helps shape what Xbox, part of Microsoft’s $21 billion-revenue gaming division, builds next.

Bond says her team starts with the understanding that players’ passion stems from their love of the brand, and that the only adequate response is to listen closely and meaningfully incorporate their feedback into the work.

But listening alone isn’t enough. For Bond, the priority is pairing what players say with what they actually do.

“We listen really intently to our players across all channels,” she says. “We also marry that with how players are actually behaving…What choices are you making, what games are you playing, how are you investing, what are your hours of play? And that really helps direct what we’re doing.”

That combination of sentiment and behavior has already reshaped key parts of the Xbox experience.

Bond points to Xbox Play Anywhere (XPA) as a blueprint for how the company responds to shifting player habits.

“When we actually looked at the player behavior of people who were playing XPA games, we saw they were playing 20% more,” she says. Those players also spent more money in games and were more likely to try titles that supported the flexible play model. “Based off of that, we started to invest more in XPA, amplifying the catalog, bringing them more things.”

Handheld devices told a similar story. Windows-based handheld gaming had been around for years, but player frustration with the experience was consistent and clear.

“We were looking at player feedback, and they said, ‘We really wish there was an improvement on the experience of Windows on these handhelds,’” Bond recalls. That became the spark for a new investment push to work more closely with Windows and deliver a far better experience for players.

In Bond’s world, no single business line—console, PC, cloud, subscription, or studio acquisition—drives strategy alone. The deciding factor is where player energy naturally flows.

“What do we see players gravitating toward?” she says. “What are the features that they most deeply value? Making sure we’re balancing delivering what’s now and leaning into those new features and capabilities.”

Game Pass emerged from that balancing act. Before it launched, players had only two options: buy a game outright or rely on free-to-play titles. But the community wanted a dependable library they could all access and explore together. Xbox built Game Pass to meet that need by providing a consistent, curated collection available to jump into at any time, says Bond.
This four-part formula of testing ideas, watching for user signals, investing, then recalibrating has become Xbox’s operating rhythm, she adds. Yet as Xbox leans further into its “play anywhere” identity, one question looms: Where does hardware fit in?

Bond’s response is clear. “Hardware is absolutely core to everything that we do at Xbox, because we know that our most valuable players… love the hardware experience,” she says. That belief drives the development of Xbox’s next-generation console, which she describes as a powerful device built for greater player flexibility. The console remains the foundation of the Xbox experience, yet the future is hybrid, where players can carry their library, community, identity, and store across PC, console, and cloud.

This balance between honoring the past and building for the future defines Bond’s leadership challenge. She faces the same dilemma many legacy brands face: how to innovate boldly without alienating a core audience that deeply identifies with what the brand has always been. Her approach combines attentive listening with operational rigor. She often frames the work as a constant examination of the fundamentals, from player activity to purchasing habits to subscription trends.

In Bond’s view, the future of Xbox will be shaped by both numbers and voices, by the feedback players offer and the choices they make across devices. Bonds stresses that she understands why change can feel jarring for a community that is invested, but she sees promise in gamers’ intensity. Moreover, Bond says, she views their commitment not as an obstacle but as a signal that will guide Xbox into its next 25 years.

Fortune Brainstorm AI returns to San Francisco Dec. 8–9 to convene the smartest people we know—technologists, entrepreneurs, Fortune Global 500 executives, investors, policymakers, and the brilliant minds in between—to explore and interrogate the most pressing questions about AI at another pivotal moment. Register here.

The government of the French-Canadian province of Quebec is planning to set quotas for the availability of French-language music on streaming platforms, but new polling shows there may be little appetite for the plan among listeners.

The poll, commissioned by the Digital Media Association (DiMA), which represents Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon Music, along with some video streaming services, found 66% of Quebecers don’t want the government to influence what music is available on streaming services.

Among younger adults aged 18 to 34, opposition rises to three-quarters, according to a survey carried out by Leger, Quebec’s largest opinion pollster.

Quebec is the only province in Canada where French is the dominant language, and successive provincial governments have taken various steps to protect Quebec’s French culture and heritage. Among the most recent is Bill 109, which would require the government to set quotas on the “quantity or proportion” of French-language cultural content featured on streaming platforms.

The bill would also “enshrine the right to discoverability of and access to original French language cultural content” in the province’s Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms.

Streaming services represented by DiMA have been pushing back against the legislation. In a brief submitted to a public hearing on the proposed law in October, DiMA suggested the bill could backfire: Altering the music options listeners have could make them less engaged with streaming platforms, resulting in lost revenue for Quebecois artists and less investment in Quebec’s music scene.

“We believe the most effective path forward is one focused on listener choice, not constraint. Quebec artists and Francophone music are thriving on streaming services today because audiences are empowered to find and listen to music organically,” said Graham Davies, DiMA’s President and CEO.

“By working together – combining the government’s cultural vision with the streaming services’ reach, expertise and innovation – we believe Francophone and music of Quebec can continue to thrive both at home and on the global stage.”

DiMA also argues that it would be technically difficult to implement a system that prioritizes Quebecois recordings over others.

“International music metadata standards do not require a song to be identified by nationality or language, meaning streaming services do not have a way to identify at scale which songs could or should be classified as Canadian, Québécois or French-language,” DiMA said in a statement.

Notably, a recent study carried out for The Australia Institute asserted that music recommendation algorithms do at least recognize the language that lyrics are sung in, and favor songs that match a user’s own language.

The debate over Quebec’s bill comes as the major streaming services are already embroiled in a legal dispute with Canada’s federal government over a new Canada-wide law that requires streamers to hand over 5% of their Canadian revenue to agencies and organizations that support Canadian and Indigenous content.

That law, the Online Streaming Act of 2023, is an update of a long-standing law in Canada that requires public broadcasters to pay into funds supporting Canadian content. It’s estimated that DSPs would have to hand over CAD $200 million (USD $142 million) annually under the new law.

In 2024, the law was challenged in federal court by members of DiMA as well as members of Music Picture Association–Canada, whose membership includes Disney, Paramount (now Paramount Skydance), Sony, NBCUniversal, and Warner Bros. Discovery.

In December 2024, the federal court paused enforcement of what the media companies call a “streaming tax,” pending resolution of the legal action. The court has yet to issue a ruling in the matter.

“Streaming has become one of the strongest engines for Québec’s music ecosystem, helping turn piracy into prosperity, returning 70% of revenues to rightsholders and artists, and connecting Québec’s artists to millions of listeners at home and globally.”

Graham Davies, DiMA

The Leger poll for DiMA also found that a majority of Quebec respondents (61%) say French-language music is already easy to find on streaming services. It also found that 76% of listeners would oppose the French-language legislation if it meant higher subscription prices, and 65% would oppose it if it resulted in streaming services leaving the Quebec market.

Quebecers “place real importance on having the freedom to navigate new artists and genres when they stream music,” said Lisa Covens, Vice-President at Leger. “The notion of government influencing what’s available doesn’t match what many respondents say they want.”

Davies added that streaming “has become one of the strongest engines for Québec’s music ecosystem, helping turn piracy into prosperity, returning 70% of revenues to rightsholders and artists, and connecting Québec’s artists to millions of listeners at home and globally. This success is possible because consumers have choice, and because streaming services can invest meaningfully in supporting and showcasing Francophone and Québec talent on the world stage.”Music Business Worldwide