In early June, some Xbox owners fired up their consoles and were greeted with an ad supporting the election campaign of conservative Canadian politician Doug Ford. Ford, who was the Progressive Conservative Party candidate and has been compared to Donald Trump, rode a wave of reactionary populism and won his bid to become premier of Ontario that same month.

According to a Microsoft spokesperson, "The ad was limited in scope, region and timing, running for a few days last June. We regularly seek input from the community and decided to remove the ad."

The Ford ad was a pilot program to test political advertising on Xbox, but based on community feedback Microsoft has decided not to explore this segment in the future.