I just discovered Microsoft Xbox’s podcast, and I want to talk about some great things from their recent episode, while also attempting to do justice to the history of a remarkably long-tenured podcasting pioneer.

The Official Xbox Podcast

First to the current state - the show with host Tina Amini came on my radar because a recent episode essentially broke significant news about Xbox’s commitment to launching key upcoming games across competitive platforms. That got picked up in other industry news, and it’s notable that it came not from interviews with the external press, but the use of this podcast as a de facto press release and place where Microsoft can shape the narrative with their experts while providing valuable, entertaining content for their fans. It’s intriguing to think how many more companies can use their branded company podcasts as a channel to share announcements as they would with external press.

Now to the history. In preparing to write this review, I learned a bit more about Xbox’s history with branded podcasts. This current show format took over from “Major Nelson Radio”, which ran from at least July 2005 (early podcasting history is notoriously hard to pin down) until July 2023. The host was Lawrence Hyrb, the Director of Programming for Xbox Live. In his 20+ year career as a key community face of the company, he hosted the weekly podcast among other touchpoints. It’s really cool to hear about some of these very early commitments to interacting directly between companies and their audiences, and that Microsoft is keeping a connection to the original show as it evolves to a new format.