Xbox’s new CEO Asha Sharma has announced a major shake-up to the upper management of Microsoft’s gaming division, bringing in several new staff into leadership roles. Many of them have come from AI-focused roles.
In an internal memo released on Tuesday, Sharma explained the decision as part of a push to revitalise the gaming company, which has struggled in recent years.
“We need to evolve how we work and how we are organized across our platform,” Sharma wrote. “Right now, it is too hard to ship impact quickly. We spend too much time inward instead of with the community, and we lack the depth we need in some of the fundamentals.”
What’s interesting with these new Xbox staff are the past involvement many (but not all) of them have with AI projects at Microsoft. These new leads, and their former roles, are as follows:
Jared Palmer – former CoreAI vice president of product and a senior vice president of GitHub – is joining the technical team and will be involved in matters of “taste” according to Sharma’s memo.
Tim Allen – formerly a CoreAI vice president of design as well as senior vice president of design and research at GitHub – will lead design at Xbox.
Jonathan McKay – previously a director at Meta and head of growth for ChatGPT and OpenAI – will take the role of head of growth at Xbox.
Evan Chaki – formerly a general manager at CoreAI – will now run a team of engineers aiming to streamline development at Xbox.
David Schloss – once Instacart’s senior director of product and growth – is taking the reins of the subscription and cloud departments of Xbox.
With these new staff, a few mainstays at Xbox will be leaving or having their roles change. This includes corporate vice president Kevin Gammill, who was working on the Xbox user experience team, who is leaving this role. As is Roanne Sones, corporate vice president for Xbox devices and ecosystem, who will be shifting to a Xbox advisor role after a leave of absence.
While many of these new leadership staff have experience in the AI sector, it’s worth noting that Xbox has also announced the end of Copilot gaming support development for both Xbox consoles and mobile. While not an outright step back on generative AI as a whole, it does indicate a shift away from the established strategy.
This is not the first big shift Sharma has initiated at Xbox. She’s refused to rule out exclusive console games, saying she wants to “make the right decision, not the fastest decision”. She’s written an open letter around the future with Matt Booty, addressing AI fears due to her previous background working with the technology. Sharma has hinted at the memory cost problem and its impact on the upcoming Xbox Helix console, and it leaked internal memos spoken about how Game Pass had gotten too expensive for players.
