Phil Spencer Retires as Microsoft Names AI Executive Asha Sharma as Gaming CEO in Xbox Shake-Up
With its Xbox and gaming business, Microsoft named AI executive Asha Sharma to replace Phil Spencer as the head of its console company, which will recommit console users after years of developing products for mobile and PC players.
The company, which has operated the Xbox business since 2014 and named gaming CEO in 2022 is retiring, said Spencer, who was a former executive of the game. Similarly, Xbox President Sarah Bond will depart from . According to Sharma, chief Matt Booty will be chief content officer of Xbox games studios.
A former Instacart and Meta Platforms CEO Sharma, who has served as a consumer expert, was chosen for her role in gaming’. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said Friday in he wrote on the blog post ‘I am going to be chief executive officer of gaming.”
During the last few years, the company has focused on expanding beyond its core console audience with an emphasis on PC and mobile gamers targeted by acquisitions spree including $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard. Many long-time Xbox devotees were alienated by those moves and others, including the phrase “the move of a new game” that was not in use. Meanwhile, the mobile gaming market slowed down and Microsoft’s plans there have been slow.
According to industry tracker Obsidian, Microsoft has fewer than 2500 games staff since 2024. It has shuttered studios such as Arkane Austin, the Initiative and Tango Gameworks (and canceled games that were planned for years) and other companies which have been under fire. Also, the company sparked controversy among gamers over deals to bring its most important console games to rival devices from Sony and Nintendo.
Sharma wants to reverse some of the slide.
He said in an email to staff ‘We are committed to our core Xbox fans and players, who have invested with us for the last 25 years as well as developers who create the universes and experiences that play across the world. We will be re-engaged in Xbox from the beginning of our childhood with console, which has changed who we are. Paraphrast.
Sharma has been overseeing Microsoft’s efforts to work with a large set of AI models, as well as the focus on AI agents, applications and developer tools.
When the industry swelled by the rapid interest in China’s DeepSeek model, Sharma led about 100 engineers working around the clock to respond to Nadella’s demand for an immediate response (testing the software and releasing a version of it) for Microsoft’t cloud customers within days.
LinkedIn profile She was a key part of Instacart’s IPO and focused on profitability as chief operating officer at the company, according to her LinkedIn account. Four years in product leadership roles at Meta, she served as a for four years. Her career has been a two-year stint at Microsoft in marketing for the past, and she left in 2013.
She rejoined Microsoft two years ago as president Core AI product.
Shares of Microsoft closed little changed at $397.23 Friday in New York.
It follows a grim 10 year for Xbox’s to move. Despite 10 years of good play-testing against Sony’s PlayStation and Nintendo console, Spencer admitted that 2013’S Xbox One “lost the worst generation to lose” its game. Since then, sales of Xbox have stalled.
“We’ve been selling consoles to the same 200 million global households,” Spencer told Bloomberg Businessweek in 2024.
Despite the fact that Spencer was an intern at Microsoft in 1988 and moved to Xbox in 2001, she made several acquisitions for the business, spending $10 billion on Minecraft maker Mojang Studios and Bethesda Softworks before the Activision deal added Candy Crush and Call of Duty.
The plan was to add games to the Game Pass subscription service, which could potentially protect Xbox from its risky console business. Instead of selling top titles at a premium $70, but offering the service’s best titles would be an investment for sales of higher-margin games such as Call of Duty.
It initially drew large audiences but growth was slow, forcing Microsoft to increase the monthly Game Pass price by 50 percent.
Bloomberg has reported that Xbox’s chief financial officer, Amy Hood, has pressed the Xbox division to earn more money. CEOs recently hit 30 percent “accountability margins” – a term for profitability.
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