In her introductory email to Xbox employees, Asha Sharma, the new CEO of Microsoft Gaming and former president of Microsoft’s CoreAI, has promised a return to Xbox. This, among other things about the announcement, raised a few questions, perhaps the most pertinent being: “What does this mean?»
Windows Central spoke with Sharma and new CCO Matt Booty to ask this question. Instead of clarifying his plans, Sharma offered vaguely positive platitudes that had little substance. “For me, the spirit of ‘Return to Xbox’ is about returning to the spirit that the team was founded on,” Sharma said. “It’s that spirit of surprise, it’s the spirit of building something that no one else was willing to try. I’ve heard of ‘renegade’ and ‘rebellion’ and ‘fun’. That’s what I was thinking about when I wrote that.”
Sharma at least acknowledged that she has a lot of work to do before making any major decisions, but it’s bizarre that Microsoft would just leave her for interviews when she admits that she still has so much to learn about Xbox. When asked if Xbox was getting rid of game exclusives and whether or not that policy might be revised, she said: “Right now, I have to learn, frankly. About the ‘why’ of those decisions, what we were optimizing for, and what the data says about Xbox strategy today. That’s the honest answer. I look at lifetime value, not just what happened in a previous moment, or short-term efficiencies and things like that. “The plan is the plan until it’s not the plan.”
About AI, Sharma reiterated that it would not flood [the Xbox] ecosystem with slop,” and said she stood by what she wrote in her introductory email. Booty chimed in with further clarification, adding, “We have no pressure from Microsoft, there is no guidance on AI coming.”
Overall, the interview contains few concrete details about Sharma’s vision for Xbox. As she said: “I think from there the work is proof rather than promise. » We’ll just have to wait and see what this work actually looks like.