Changing of the Guard at Xbox: Phil Spencer Retires, Sarah Bond Steps Down, Asha Sharma Takes Over as CEO of Microsoft Gaming

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Some big changes were announced at Microsoft over the weekend with the passing of the torch for multiple key leadership positions at Xbox.

See full article...
 
AI person stepping up to head Xbox? Some rando passing over Sarah Bond (who decided to quit I guess) for the position?

Oh boy Microsoft's Gaming Division is cooked.

All the same, its not been doing great over the last several years anyhow, so maybe a shake-up is in order. However not sure if it's been struggling because of Phil & Sarah, or in spite of them (gaming not hitting Nadella's margin targets).
 
Yeah, I'm mixed on this as well but all we can do and wait and see what happens next.

Asha say's she's focused on quality use of AI but coming from CoreAI I'm not sure if it had a hand in all the crap Windows updates we've experienced since October. If so, well, worried doesn't quite describe it, if not, then I'll keep a level of optimism for the Xbox's future.
 
I said it a few days ago, XBOX is a dead brand, this reaffirms that even more.
 

Inside Microsoft’s big Xbox leadership shake-up​

268364_Inside_Microsoft’s_big_Xbox_leadership_shakeup_CVirginia


Tom Warren is a senior editor and author of Notepad, who has been covering all things Microsoft, PC, and tech for over 20 years.

Spencer’s decision led to months of careful successor planning. It was announced to the world on Friday, but it was supposed to be today. Microsoft was forced to announce early because it started to leak and IGN was planning to run a story, according to sources familiar with the situation.

That kicked off a day of chaos, where teams inside Xbox were hearing the news first through reporters and news outlets, instead of via internal memos. The team running Sarah Bond’s social media accounts was so unprepared that a LinkedIn post inviting people to provide feedback about Xbox accessibility features went live just before her departure was announced. It sat there for hours, until Bond’s team eventually posted her own memo.

Microsoft executives shared four memos with Xbox teams on Friday, but only Phil Spencer mentioned Bond. Satya Nadella, Microsoft Gaming EVP Matt Booty, and new Microsoft Gaming CEO Asha Sharma all had kind words for Spencer, but no mention of Bond. Even Bond’s own memo to her teams didn’t arrive until hours after the announcement and wasn’t part of Microsoft’s blog.


Six months after Bond’s promotion, Xbox executive Kareem Choudhry, who reported directly to Bond, departed Microsoft and triggered another shake-up of some teams inside Xbox. Choudhry was key to Xbox’s backward compatibility support and helped bring Xbox Cloud Gaming to life as xCloud in 2019.

Just weeks after Choudhry departed, former Xbox chief marketing officer Jerret West also left Microsoft in June 2024. That meant the Xbox marketing team was now reporting directly to Bond. A month later, Microsoft delivered a marketing campaign that signalled people didn’t need to buy an Xbox console anymore. The message was that “you don’t need an Xbox to play Xbox,” because games were available through Xbox Cloud Gaming on TVs.

This was all part of the “Xbox everywhere” strategy that Bond had been pursuing, a vision to move the Xbox brand beyond its roots in console hardware. Months later the “This is an Xbox” campaign launched, with commercials that positioned a phone or a tablet as an Xbox instead of just a console. It was a confusing campaign, and I’m told it offended many Xbox employees internally.

“This is an Xbox” also debuted months after Bond appeared on stage at the Bloomberg Technology Summit and announced an Xbox mobile gaming store that was supposed to launch in July 2024. It still doesn’t exist almost two years later. Although attempts to redefine Xbox were clearly tied to the mobile store efforts, Microsoft still went ahead with “This is an Xbox” after the store was delayed.


www.theverge.com

Inside Microsoft’s big Xbox leadership shake-up

Microsoft has a new gaming CEO
www.theverge.com www.theverge.com
 

Report: Former Xbox President Sarah Bond's direction "offended" employees — "This is an Xbox" marketing campaign deemed failure​

News
By Michael Hoglund published 38 minutes ago
With Phil Spencer's departure, Xbox employees are supposedly relieved that the President of Xbox has left as well.

I want to add that clearly, Xbox's higher-ups were okay with each and every idea that was pushed forward, as they all had the final say. Both Phil Spencer and Satya Nadella played a part in this and clearly gave the process their stamp of approval.

This report by Warren only highlights that "Xbox Everywhere" was her idea, not the multiplatform push or other aspects. I've seen some speculation that this is a potential "hit piece" by higher-ups at Microsoft in attempts to divert blame away from the brand — could that be true?

One thing's for sure, it's not fair for Sarah Bond to be taking all the blame, even if this was ultimately her marketing decision. Others in the chain of command, at the end of the day, are there to say yes or no to decisions that don't otherwise align with the brand.

https://www.windowscentral.com/gami...is-an-xbox-campaign-deemed-failure-internally
 
Marees said:

Report: Former Xbox President Sarah Bond's direction "offended" employees — "This is an Xbox" marketing campaign deemed failure​

News
By Michael Hoglund published 38 minutes ago
With Phil Spencer's departure, Xbox employees are supposedly relieved that the President of Xbox has left as well.

I want to add that clearly, Xbox's higher-ups were okay with each and every idea that was pushed forward, as they all had the final say. Both Phil Spencer and Satya Nadella played a part in this and clearly gave the process their stamp of approval.

This report by Warren only highlights that "Xbox Everywhere" was her idea, not the multiplatform push or other aspects. I've seen some speculation that this is a potential "hit piece" by higher-ups at Microsoft in attempts to divert blame away from the brand — could that be true?

One thing's for sure, it's not fair for Sarah Bond to be taking all the blame, even if this was ultimately her marketing decision. Others in the chain of command, at the end of the day, are there to say yes or no to decisions that don't otherwise align with the brand.

https://www.windowscentral.com/gami...is-an-xbox-campaign-deemed-failure-internally
Click to expand...
good points below

https://twitter.com/x/status/2025998650783203608
 
Fair points and btw, I do have a link to her memo for those who want to read it in its entirety, in the post, along with the official announcement from MS.
 
must read interview:

The person who I feel worst for is Sarah Bond, who was more than capable from a leadership standpoint. Super cool, actual gamer. I really like Sarah Bond. This is a crappy day for her. I just want to tell her that I’m thinking of her and that she’s awesome.

https://twitter.com/x/status/2026035957254766976

What an Xbox founder thinks of the new Xbox CEO | Seamus Blackley interview​




Xbox will be "sunsetted" under new CEO, original co-founder expects: "Her job is going to be as a palliative care doctor who slides Xbox gently into the night"​

News
By Austin Wood published 11 hours ago
Microsoft's pivot to AI has well and truly reached Xbox, OG console designer reasons

www.gamesradar.com

Xbox will be "sunsetted" under new CEO, original co-founder expects: "Her job is going to be as a palliative care doctor who slides Xbox gently into the night"

Microsoft's pivot to AI has well and truly reached Xbox, OG console designer reasons
www.gamesradar.com www.gamesradar.com
 
Trillionare company doing trillonaire things, meh. I dont know, not sure this matters.
 
I guess they're taking Xbox, the console, out back. RIP.
All that will be left is the old software focus (Microsoft Games Studios c.2000) but now with another $100 billion in subsidiaries it needs to squander and extinguish because they're not as regularly profitable as renting out monopoly software.
 

What Does “Sunsetting” Xbox Look Like Anyway?​

Daniel Sims – February 27, 2026

When you think about it, a traditional PlayStation-style console never fit Microsoft. Microsoft is a software and services company. They’ve never been huge on hard consumer products.

A box that does one thing and locks its content to a walled garden was never Microsoft’s style. They had an advantage in those early 360 years because their development environment brought western developers in right when the Japanese developers that made PlayStation what it was were stumbling, which is how they got Gears of War, Oblivion, BioShock, Mass Effect, and Call of Duty 2.

PC is one of the only places where gaming is still growing, so maybe Microsoft thinks that’s where they can grow. At the very least, it might help them get into regions where Xbox and consoles in general have struggled: Eastern Europe, Asia (outside Japan), maybe even China (which is also where a good chunk of the growth is happening). Wrapping console and PC together might also just help Microsoft stand out from Sony and Nintendo.

If pre-built Windows PCs become attractive living-room devices, with or without a flagship “Xbox” leading the way, is that killing Microsoft’s “console” business or just redefining it?

the most likely route forward for Microsoft is subsuming Xbox into PC because it’s the logical way to try to block Valve from potentially doing to Microsoft what Microsoft did to IBM in the 80s. IBM pretty much built the PC paradigm we’re still working with now like 40 years ago, but Microsoft and other companies took it from them by building consumer products people wanted, and now IBM is just an enterprise company now. They don’t make much of anything that directly faces consumers.

Since the iPhone and iPad started the next era of consumer computing, Windows has become a digital pickup truck. People mostly just use it for work… and gaming. The problem is, Valve became the shepherd of PC gaming and now might be taking that away from Microsoft.

SteamOS already runs Windows games through a compatibility layer on the Asus ROG Xbox Ally better than Windows 11 does. If those RDNA 5 “console PCs” come out and run games better on SteamOS or Bazzite than they do on Windows, Microsoft might be cooked. PC game developers already like Steam more than the Windows Store.

https://twitter.com/x/status/2027567494156767394
 

To save Xbox, Asha Sharma doesn't have to defeat PlayStation or Steam — she has to defeat Microsoft itself.​

Features
By Jez Corden published 3 hours ago
I've been covering Xbox for over a decade, and the same cycle keeps coming up time and time again: Microsoft itself is Xbox's biggest enemy. And to save Xbox, Asha Sharma will need to convince CEO Satya Nadella that subsidizing their recent sprint of poor decisions will take more than one or even two fiscal years.


Microsoft's insane profitability aspirations have been Xbox's biggest enemy so far.
Post Activision-Blizzard acquisition, for some odd reason, Microsoft came to Xbox with an insane and somewhat unprecedented aspiration: Xbox, the gaming company, would now chase a 30% profit margin target. A target that no other gaming platform in history has even come close to consistently.

Chasing this profit margin (known as an "accountability margin" internally) had an absolutely devastating impact on Xbox as an entity, with ramifications that will continue to play out long into the future.
One of the things Microsoft sacrificed to chase these "aspirational" profitability metrics was Xbox hardware stock. Xbox Series X|S consoles are not sitting idle on store shelves. The demand is there. The stock isn't. Microsoft didn't purchase the units required to meet demand, quite clearly because the hardware itself doesn't translate directly into high margins. And now, in the year of Grand Theft Auto 6, Microsoft will have no Xbox Series X|S stock to sell. The memory has already been purchased by PlayStation and other firms that think annually rather than quarterly. And as the AI route continues to destroy memory inventory, there's absolutely nothing the new Xbox leadership can do about it.

documents seen by Windows Central and verified by proven sources revealed a range of options Xbox considered to try and meet Microsoft's "30% by 2030" accountability margin targets. These included every absolutely dire option you can imagine. It included things like cost-saving by cutting backward compatibility with Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S generations with future hardware, and moving towards "evolving to be more software-based vs. hardware-based."
More short-term gains for long-term pain followed: putting games onto competing platforms, like PlayStation, helping Sony meet its own targets at the expense of Xbox's long-term viability as a platform. The fact that Microsoft engineered Xbox to have as little hardware stock as possible helped justify this move away from exclusives. And the stock situation remains in play, which is why you should not expect Asha Sharma to have a great deal of breathing room on exclusive games. At least in the near-term, Xbox has no stock to sell ... so why invest in exclusive games? Why invest in marketing Xbox hardware that doesn't exist to sell?

It's a self-perpetuating problem now, and at least in the medium term, selling games on PlayStation and other platforms will help Xbox invest in its future. But, it well and truly remains to be seen whether or not Xbox hardware will survive Microsoft's short-term auto-immolation on this front.

Games take years to make — not quarters. Xbox needs a plan that spans years — not quarters. Fixing Xbox's image, desirability, and depleted trust will take years — and absolutely, not quarters.

Saving Xbox will require full subsidization to correct the mistakes that CFO Amy Hood and CEO Satya Nadella made, as well as vast new investments in its Xbox PC efforts, as well as on-going investments in an increasingly competitive gaming franchise space. And further investments in finding ways to appeal to younger cohorts, which Microsoft (and the industry at large, frankly) has utterly neglected.

 
Idiots if true. Its surpring how seemingly competent companies do this.
Instead of being like profit yay!!!, growth with profit double yay!!!.
No, they are like this, it HAS to be this margin or else, forget it!!
Stupid.
Xbox everywhere was the right move, keep that growth going, just make you have some profit, even if a little thin, and it will always be thin unless Playstation and Nintendo died of a coronary or somemething.
 
Uvilla said:
Idiots if true. Its surpring how seemingly competent companies do this.
Click to expand...
Not saying I agree with it, but here’s the thinking

You have $100,000 of your own money to invest.

Let’s assume all other things are equal - and Option 1 has a yield of 5% - but it’s nice and steady. Like a Treasury Bond or CD

Option 2 yields a goal of 30%. It’s variable, but rarely outright loses money. Like a hot stock on Wall Street.

Unless you are retired on fixed income (or just looking for a diversity play), most folks will chase fhe 30%. Even if it moderately sucks it will probably out-perform 5%, and it would take more than 5 years for Option 1 to hit what 2 does (maybe) in the first year or two. And if it doesn't you cut bait and switch horses (to mix metaphors)

Companies invest their money and resources just like people. That whole “diversity play” angle is a big one that gets lost when you just keep chasing the big numbers though.
 
Brian_B said:
Not saying I agree with it, but here’s the thinking

You have $100,000 of your own money to invest.

Let’s assume all other things are equal - and Option 1 has a yield of 5% - but it’s nice and steady. Like a Treasury Bond or CD

Option 2 yields a goal of 30%. It’s variable, but rarely outright loses money. Like a hot stock on Wall Street.

Unless you are retired on fixed income (or just looking for a diversity play), most folks will chase fhe 30%. Even if it moderately sucks it will probably out-perform 5%, and it would take more than 5 years for Option 1 to hit what 2 does (maybe) in the first year or two. And if it doesn't you cut bait and switch horses (to mix metaphors)

Companies invest their money and resources just like people. That whole “diversity play” angle is a big one that gets lost when you just keep chasing the big numbers though.
Click to expand...
All could be true, in another field. Gaming, highly competitive, riddled with traps... giants have come and gone.
Being big, and profitable , its already a feat, being big, growing and profitable is a huge deal.
Shooting your testicles is not hard in this market, and MS it seems they aimed quite well. Maybe its a matter of time to know if they lost momentum, although we dont know how much they had to begin with... although before the faithful price hike day all you read was growth growth growth ( and minor comment that the division was profitable) again it all could have been spin we just will never now, until/ the day they are well, we are focusing on windows and pc gaming with plans to have such windows bull and and partners or some crap.

The X windows initiative or some such.
 
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