Huge shakeup at Xbox as CEO and president both leave

Xbox is making big changes right at the top of the corporate ladder.

IGN reported explosive news Friday afternoon that Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer will be retiring, effective Monday, February 23. On top of that, Xbox President Sarah Bond, who recently confirmed some important details about the upcoming Xbox console in an interview with Mashable, has also resigned from the company. Spencer had been a top performer at Xbox since the mid-2010s, overseeing the brand’s transition to a subscription-based business with Game Pass. Bond, meanwhile, was widely seen as Spencer’s heir apparent at the company, frequently serving as the public face of Xbox in recent years.

Spencer’s replacement as head of the Xbox division will be Asha Sharma, who currently runs Microsoft’s CoreAI product and appears to have little experience in the gaming industry. Sharma was previously an executive at Meta and Instacart, according to IGN. She will work closely with Matt Booty, head of Xbox Game Studios, who has been promoted to director of content. In an email to staff members, Spencer said this has been in the works since last fall.

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“Last fall, I shared with [Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella] that I thought I would step back and start the next chapter of my life. From that point on, we aligned ourselves to approach this transition with intention, ensuring stability and strengthening the foundation we’ve built,” Spencer wrote, according to IGN. “Xbox has always been more than a company. This is a vibrant community of players, creators, and teams who care deeply about what we build and how we build it. And that deserves a thoughtful and deliberate plan for the future. »

Aside from the pivot to keeping Xbox going through Game Pass subscriptions, Spencer will also be largely remembered for overseeing the division as it embarked on a wild acquisition spree over the past few years. Xbox’s blockbuster purchases of Bethesda and Activision took place under Spencer’s leadership, giving Microsoft an incredibly large portfolio of franchises to work with, at least in theory.

There will surely be plenty of news stories in the coming days and weeks about what this all means for Xbox, but given the brand’s general trajectory over the past year, there will be plenty of speculation circulating that this isn’t a positive development. Xbox console sales have been faltering for some time now, while first-party software titles such as Declared And The Outer Worlds 2 failed to meet sales expectations last year. Beyond that, at least some of the gaming public has disavowed the Xbox brand due to its recent inclusion on the BDS boycott list due to the ongoing technology partnership between Microsoft and the Israeli military.

In other words, Xbox has been experiencing a financial and reputational crisis for some time now. It will now be up to Sharma and Booty to correct this.