The Xbox Bowl between Missouri State and Arkansas State on Thursday night is an apt symbol of the fractured modern FBS postseason, which has lost its luster as the Playoff hogs the spotlight, teams opt out, star players transfer and fans turn elsewhere amid a crowded December sports schedule.
ESPN Events, which operates the bowl, only announced Microsoft-owned Xbox as the naming rights holder two weeks before kickoff. The game was intended to be the Bahamas Bowl, held in Nassau, Bahamas. This summer, ESPN Events announced it would move the game to Frisco, Texas, without providing an official reason. The last-minute plan places the contest in the Dallas Cowboys’ practice facility and means there will be two bowl games in the same stadium in a one-week period; the Frisco Bowl is scheduled there for Dec. 23.
Whatever you want to call the nomadic event—in 2023, it was the Famous Toastery Bowl in Charlotte, N.C.—it is far from the pinnacle of college sports. The financial details reflect this. In 2019, the last year in which the cost of a title sponsorship was reported, Elk Grove Village paid just $300,000 for the privilege. Conference participation payouts for the event are among the lowest of any bowl. Last year’s Bahamas Bowl on ESPN2 posted the lowest TV ratings of any bowl game ESPN Events put on in 2024.
It’s appropriate, then, that Xbox is now tied to a mid-December game in the out of style, bloated bowl format. The gaming giant is in a similarly unsettled place.
Xbox enters its first FBS dance at an existential crossroads, as its parent company tries to figure out what exactly a video game console means in 2025 amid a surge of cloud gaming services and handheld devices. The Xbox Series X and Series S have reportedly failed to sell at even half the total volume of the Xbox 360, which was released in 2005, in the five years they have been on the market. Their popularity has been in free-fall this year.
Microsoft has not explained why Thursday night’s contest is the right setting for its first bowl game title deal or the beginning of a potential brand turnaround, and it declined to make anyone available for interview for this story. It’s also unclear how much money—if any—Microsoft is committing to ESPN Events to slap Xbox across Jerry Jones’ practice venue.
“We had a good amount of interest, but Xbox was just a solid fit,” wrote a spokesperson for ESPN Events in an email about the title sponsorship process, declining to provide financial specifics.
The Xbox console was once considered a cutting-edge product, launched in 2001 when Microsoft was otherwise entering a prolonged post-dot-com-bubble creative malaise. The initial Xbox sold about 25 million units, and the follow-up Xbox 360 surpassed 80 million.
Now, the console as defined by a big box on a living room TV stand looks like an endangered species. Two developments have changed its outlook.
First, Nintendo figured out it could produce a two-in-one device that worked as a handheld and an in-home console with its 2017 release of the original Switch. Hardware advancements made the multi-use console more competitive graphically than its Game Boys and motion-enhanced Wii of yesteryear.
Second, cloud streaming technology improved to the point that people no longer need to download a full game to play it, thus reducing the quality of hardware required to play online with low latency. Using a cloud subscription, the processing power of video games can be mostly done on a remote server, with almost any device imaginable—including ones much cheaper than an Xbox—able to stream high-quality action as it would a live TV broadcast.
Microsoft has acknowledged times are changing. The company is increasingly focused on software revenue, and it is arguably ahead of Sony in cloud gaming, with Xbox Game Pass subscriptions providing access to Xbox games on phones, computers, smart TVs, tablets, and soon, even cars, via streaming technology.
After Microsoft watched handhelds like Valve’s Steam Deck sell well, it released its own handheld device, the ROG Xbox Ally, that can stream from the cloud on the go. Notably, it is gifting the handheld—not the Series X or Series S console—to Missouri State and Arkansas State players ahead of the Xbox Bowl.
“Players are streaming their games more than ever,” Ashley McKissick, corporate vice president of Xbox Experiences and Platforms Engineering, wrote in a blog post on Xbox’s official website last month. McKissick said 29 countries, including India, could now play Xbox games through the cloud, and that cloud adoption had grown more than 20% year-over-year.
Microsoft, which this year executed multiple mass layoffs in its gaming arm, is also reexamining the star attraction of its $75 billion Activision Blizzard purchase—the Call of Duty series.
Activision Blizzard is getting routed by Electronic Arts’ Battlefield 6, a game that appeals to a similar cohort as Call of Duty but is released every few years instead of every year. Gamers have long criticized Call of Duty for becoming stale due to its annual format—a similar complaint to what people have said about annual sports games like Madden NFL—and underwhelming sales numbers for 2025’s Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 are making the company listen.
The number of daily active users for Call of Duty games has halved since December 2024, according to Video Game Insights research. Battlefield 6 is on track to defeat Black Ops 7 in sales and usage.
“The Call of Duty franchise has long been one of gaming’s most reliable juggernauts, consistently delivering blockbuster launches and industry-leading engagement,” industry data firm VGI said in a report shared with Sportico. “But new data surrounding the release of Black Ops 7 paints a dramatically different picture. One that signals a meaningful shift in player behavior and possibly the franchise’s broader momentum.”
Last week, Microsoft said it would no longer release two Call of Duty games with the same theme in back-to-back years. There are two sub-series within Call of Duty—Black Ops and Modern Warfare—that are made by different studios and have some visual distinctions. Both 2024 and 2025 were Black Ops.
“We … know that for some of you, the franchise has not met your expectations fully,” Call of Duty developers wrote in a Dec. 9 blog post. “To be very clear, we know what you expect and rest assured we will deliver, and overdeliver, on those expectations as we move forward.”
So how is Microsoft’s gaming division going to turn the tide Thursday night at the Xbox Bowl? It’s hard to say.
ESPN Events promises “Xbox-themed moments and in-venue activations.” A company official confirmed this means there will be Xbox consoles at the stadium.
Microsoft did not respond to a question about its promotion strategy. Instead, it offered up a vague statement that did little to clear up an event that typifies this strange bowl season.
“Xbox is all about empowering people to play however and wherever they like,” the Microsoft spokesperson wrote. “The Xbox Bowl brings that spirit to life—mixing game‑day energy with the joy of gaming in a way fans haven’t seen before. Teaming up with ESPN lets us bring players closer to the action, whether they’re in the stands, at home, or jumping into games with friends around the world. We’re excited to celebrate the passion for play with longtime fans and those discovering it for the first time through a reimagined, joy‑filled game day experience.”
