Xbox outlook turns cloudy after leadership swap
© Microsoft Microsoft’s Xbox leadership went through a major reshuffle just a few days. Phil Spencer is retiring from his role leading Microsoft Gaming, and Microsoft named Asha Sharma as EVP and CEO of Microsoft Gaming. Sarah Bond, the Xbox President and COO, is also leaving, while Matt Booty was promoted to EVP and Chief Content Officer, reporting to Sharma.
The change is not being framed as firings, but it is still a top-level reshuffle, with Spencer staying on in an advisory role through the summer and Sharma taking over overall platform and content leadership. A recent The Verge Notepad report adds that the rollout was messy internally, and that the transition was not supposed to be made official until this week. There are a lot of comments about this change, including from the founder of Xbox.
Xbox founder doesn’t see a bright future for Xbox
Seamus Blackley has been one of the loudest voices weighing in. Blackley is an original Xbox creator from the early Microsoft “renegades” era that pushed the first console over the line inside the company. He has not been part of the Xbox org for years, but he is still treated as a key founder figure whenever Microsoft goes through a big identity shift.
Satya Nadella has made an incredible number of bets and invested an incredible amount of money and credibility in the transform model AI future. Xbox, like a lot of businesses that aren’t the core AI business, is being sunsetted. They don’t say that, but that’s what’s happening. I expect that the new CEO, Asha Sharma, her job is going to be as a palliative care doctor who slides Xbox gently into the night.
— Seamus Blackley
In his view, putting an AI-focused executive in charge of the gaming org is a clue about what Microsoft wants Xbox to be next. He argues it only makes sense if the goal is to steer Xbox through a slow wind-down, or to run a long transition where games stop being the primary objective and instead become a supporting piece of Microsoft’s wider AI strategy.
Hopefully Blackley is wrong in his assessment, and Xbox can still thrive, with new hardware expected sometime next year. The gaming market is too large to ignore, but Microsoft’s recent moves make it look like it is treating Xbox as a lower priority.
Sources: GamesBeat
