The recent shuffle of Xbox leadership, which saw longtime Microsoft gaming CEO Phil Spencer be replaced by CoreAI executive Asha Sharma, sparked some understandably dramatic reactions. Notably, original Xbox co-founder and console designer Seamus Blackley predicted the shake-up will herald the absolute end of Xbox as a whole, but former Xbox boss Peter Moore hopes things aren’t quite so drastic.
Moore, who oversaw the Xbox label for Microsoft from 2003 to 2007, sat down with GamesBeat to give his take on the restructuring, which included the sudden departure of president and presumed Spencer replacement Sarah Bond. Specifically, he confirmed that he’d seen Blackley’s comments and said, “I hope he’s a little misguided.”
Compared to the general reaction to Sharma becoming the new CEO of Microsoft’s gaming arm, Moore sounds more optimistic there, too.
“I hope she can bring that back and get a bit of the fight going again that we used to have. Have a lot more fun in the industry like we used to,” he said.
Of course, no one knows how all of this is going to shake out just yet, but Spencer has been instrumental to Microsoft’s gaming business, hardware development, studio acquisitions, and brand recognition for more than a decade. Even without such a controversial figure stepping in to replace him, his departure was always bound to signal the end of an era for Xbox.
That’s to say nothing of Bond’s exit, which was made slightly less conspicuous by her delayed acknowledgment of the situation, in which she expressed support for Sharma as CEO and said “this is the right time for me to take my next step, both personally and professionally” following challenges resulting from Xbox’s Activision Blizzard acquisition.
For her part, Sharma has tried to assuage concerns over her ties to AI, saying in her initial message to Xbox employees, “we will not chase short-term efficiency or flood our ecosystem with soulless AI slop” and expressing her commitment to “great games” and studio empowerment. Whether you’re convinced is, of course, up to you.
Xbox is not “dead” after CEO change, says original co-founder: “It’s literally something I nearly died to bring into existence” and “seeing it struggle and being unable to act is hard.”
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