Phil Spencer’s shock retirement announcement final week, coupled with the equally sudden resignation of Xbox president Sarah Bond and elevation of former Instacart exec Asha Sharma to Microsoft Gaming CEO, left quite a lot of unanswered questions. Was Phil pressured out? Why did not Bond, his presumed successor, get the job? Who’s this new boss, who solely joined Microsoft in 2024 and was beforehand all about AI? And naturally, the large one: What does all of it imply?
Frankly, I do not know. I initially suspected shenanigans, due primarily to the very pronounced silence of Bond, the one individual amongst everybody concerned who did not have one thing good to say about everybody else. (An absence emphasised by the truth that nobody however Phil—not Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, nor incoming Xbox boss Asha Sharma or newly promoted chief content material officer Matt Booty—even acknowledged Bond’s existence, a lot much less thanked her for her work.) A later report by The Verge claimed that the retirement announcement was purported to exit immediately however the cork popped early due to leaks, which is why all of it appeared so messy.
“Xbox, like quite a lot of companies that aren’t the core AI enterprise, is being sunsetted. They don’t say that, however that’s what’s taking place. I count on that the brand new CEO, Asha Sharma, her job goes to be as a palliative care physician who slides Xbox gently into the night time.”
Full respect to Blackley for simply laying all of it out on the desk—I like daring pronouncements, the wilder, the higher—however I’m obligated to say, once more, that Blackley has no particular perception into the matter. He left Microsoft in 2002 and whereas he is remained lively within the discipline of sport improvement, he hasn’t gone again to Microsoft. He presently holds the function of CEO of tech startup Pacific Gentle and Hologram.
“There’s a core perception, and you may see it in what Satya stated, that AI will subsume video games like it’ll subsume the whole lot,” Blackley stated. “The job of all these folks is to only gently usher all of those enterprise models into the brand new world of AI. That’s what you’re seeing right here. Whether or not or not you agree with it, whether or not you agree with AI having the potential to do this, whether or not AI can be profitable, is a separate matter. However that’s what we’re seeing.”
In truth, Blackley stated he’d have been extra shocked if it was. “It will have been stunning if they’d any person in there in a significant function who was enthusiastic about video games, passionate in regards to the creator-driven enterprise of video games, as a result of it could be in direct battle with the whole lot else Microsoft is doing. Microsoft is an organization that’s now about enabling its clients by enabling AI to drive issues. That’s at odds with the auteur mannequin of any artwork, however particularly of video games.”
All of that stands in direct distinction to the phrases of Sharma herself, who stated within the announcement of her new function as Microsoft Gaming CEO that one in all her priorities is “a renewed dedication to Xbox beginning with console which has formed who we’re.” She additionally promised to “not chase short-term effectivity or flood our ecosystem with soulless AI slop.”
It is clearly too quickly to inform how Sharma’s takeover of Microsoft Gaming will shake out. Possibly there will be a brand new Xbox console that places PlayStation to disgrace—however possibly, too, Microsoft finally ends up like Amazon, which anticipated a simple win towards Steam and is now pushing AI-powered Snoop Dogg video games. Blackley left open the likelihood that Sharma may pull it off, however concerning her preliminary feedback, he did not sound too optimistic: “A, you need to imagine that. B, that’s what each single one who’s been introduced into video games from different industries has stated after they’re employed, in each press launch, most likely going again longer than you and I’ve been on this enterprise.”
