What about Xbox? The management leaves, the head of the AI ​​department takes over

There was a real earthquake at Microsoft. The two most important people responsible for the Xbox brand have just finished their adventure with the company. The American corporation announced their successors, but this decision raises many question marks.

He started in 1988 as an intern, initially working in the multimedia department on the Encarta CD-ROM encyclopedia, as well as Microsoft Money and Works, before moving to the games department and from 2001 working exclusively within the Xbox department. Phil Spencer amortized the disastrous debut of Xbox One in 2014introduced Xbox One X/S and Xbox Series X/Sand also developed Gamepass and led to Bethesda and Activision acquisitions. From 2022, he held the position of CEO of the gaming department, reporting directly to Satya Nadella.

Now, after 38 years, Spencer is retiring (at the age of 58). His departure resulted in the resignation of Sarah Bondthe current head of the Xbox department, who had been working at the company since 2017 and was widely tipped to be Spencer’s successor.

Meanwhile, Satya Nadella announced that it 38-year-old Asha Sharmahead of Core AI, will take over Spencer’s responsibilities. Interestingly, she has been working at Microsoft since very recently, in 2024.

She immediately promised that Xbox would not flood the market with soulless “AI slope” and that human creativity would still count, but at the same time using increasingly modern tools for creating games. However, fans have reason to be concernedand life will verify how much truth there is in it.

By the way, the current head of Microsoft Game Studios, Matt Booty has been promoted to Chief Content Officer. The former head of the Midway studio also said that there will be no other organizational changes at this point, which implicitly means no layoffs – at least for now.

What does the future of Xbox look like? Quite interesting, because the market for traditional consoles is shrinking, exclusivity becomes unprofitableand everyone’s push to release games on multiple platforms has changed the market in major ways. Additionally, the popularity of portable devices such as Steam Deck or ROG Ally has changed the approach to creating games and providing access to them. Will Asha Sharma cope with the new challenge?and at the same time not tarnish the reputation of Xbox, whose actions were supposed to bring the worlds of PC and consoles closer and better and improve gaming on Windows? Time will tell.