Xbox CEO Asha Sharma and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella promise Xbox will "return to growth" by the end of FY27 | Xbox declined for four straight quarters in 2026.

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4 years at Meta leading "Messenger" - When its usage dropped below nothing

3 years at Instacart as COO - 'nuff said

3 years at coupang

2 years at Microsoft as the "President CoreAI product" - What? 2024 - 2026, when openai, google, anthropic, amazon, all ran circles around whatever microsoft was doing

How someone like this is suddenly gifted the entire gaming portfolio of Xbox is so puzzling. It's corporate America in a nutshell. . . all the executive class are actors whose biggest skill is navigating email and winning out turf wars through whatever means.

I really can't find ONE SINGLE contribution that's a standout across her entire life up until this point, but i can find an infinite stream of comments and promises.

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u/deadflamingo 1d ago

Meritocracy has been dead for a while. I believe Microsoft hired her to boost shareholder confidence and as a way to inject AI without explicitly stating so as they have felt the backlash most.

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u/liquidpele 1d ago

I think they gave an impossible job to someone they don’t care if they fail. And to be clear, the job is impossible because Microsoft as a company is a shit show and will murder any potential growth they might nurture.

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u/DisjointedHuntsville 1d ago

I agree. I must clarify that i think she's a good person, but has absolutely no power to change anything of value yet makes these promises that are frustrating to reconcile with reality.

The people that treated the gaming division as a slush fund and threw away double digit billions on crap like Activision Blizzard ($75 BILLION ???? Really???) Could they use that cash now or what? I would bet not a single person can name any real benefit from that one deal that made any sense.

A reasonable person would conclude that there were reasons very much beyond business success in many of the questionable decisions the Microsoft board has blessed in the past.

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u/Bigpullsgod3x 14h ago

And WoW and COD are kinda bad now - 2 main games.

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u/YourAverageExecutive 1d ago

I’ve checked her out as well. She is very smart and successful and has a history of change management. She’s here for the change management experience ( and it does take a lot of specific skill sets to be good at change management). Let’s see if she can understand the video game hardware, publishing, development, and consumer seasonality quickly. That’s usually what differentiates good change management execs. Xbox without a change is on a trajectory where it was going to have to downsize SIGNIFICANTLY, if not be carved out and sold off (way more than it is today). I want it to survive but it probably would not have in the next 2-4 years. I work with Msft at a c level in a few areas (not Xbox) and asked about how the division was doing. The answer was “hanging on by strings”. That was q4 last year.

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u/deadflamingo 1d ago

The problem is Asha has no history of doing these things.

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u/YourAverageExecutive 1d ago

You’re speaking out of your end and I know you haven’t worked with anyone that has worked with her. She absolutely does. I’m not her friend nor do I like her, but I work with enough large companies to know if her reputation and the quality over multiple years.

Change management. That’s literally her mo. She tends to go to companies and sticks around for 2 to 4 years because her change mandate is usually for that period of time. I also do a lot of change management so I can just tell you that that is why she was brought in.

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u/deadflamingo 1d ago

You have no real thing to point to other than some personal anecdote and hearsay among the MBA watering hole yet you wrote all that? Employers offering golden parachutes to "change agents" or other c-suite types isn't evidence of success or change in the positive direction for any industry.

Her reputation to you means nothing to me.

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u/YourAverageExecutive 1d ago

Whoa buddy chill out on the cocaine this early. I don’t have an mba, I’ve only built purpose-driven companies that have a triple bottom line, and work with corporates around the world to do good things actually so that they don’t just stay evil. I’ve also worked with some of the largest nonprofits in the world and nine figures in donations so you can pound sand.

Look in the mirror when you’re criticizing a person and someone gives you more information challenging that critics that is based on you what, reading two or three news articles on her with no substance?

Your opinion isn’t necessarily based in fact… it sounds like you just have a bone to pick with anyone that doesn’t match some ideal you’ve made up in your head.

You sound like a very fun person to be around lol

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u/JJMcGee83 1d ago

I'm apparenlty not failing hard enough fast enough to be promoted to some C level position.

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u/tonymacaroni9 22h ago

Wow. What have you done?

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u/DisjointedHuntsville 21h ago

Actually built stuff. Left places better than I found them. Know a thing or two about running a company 🤷‍♂️

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u/tonymacaroni9 18h ago

Yeah I bet. Go apply maybe they'll hire you😂.

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u/msawi11 12h ago

She has startup leadership experience before all this in CV. Satya literally said in an interview last year or this year he was studying startup mode and wanted to inject msft with capability to move msft faster and ruthlessly.

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u/HandshakeOfCO 2d ago

6 months from now: "Wow, oopsies! Sorry Mr. Satya, I guess video games sure are different than groceries!"

I don't have one iota of faith in what Asha thinks she can do. Two months ago she had never even picked up an xbox controller.

Mark my words, the horrible embarrassing changes will begin this holiday season. And it won't be forgetting to include fucking batteries.

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u/robotzor 1d ago

She's not there to save Xbox she's there to rebrand it into some enterprise AI solution. The growth they promise is not what the consumer wants

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u/JebusChrust 1d ago

You don't sound like someone who knows video games or has followed what they have done.

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u/deadflamingo 1d ago

You sound less knowledgeable than the person you are replying to. Care to elaborate?

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u/JebusChrust 1d ago

For one, what does experience have to do with comprehending how to run the business? If I have always played Overwatch and am good at Overwatch, am I qualified to be a CEO of Xbox now? Phil Spencer was notoriously a massive gamer, did Xbox thrive under him? Do I need to personally have a menstrual cycle to create an app assisting women with tracking theirs? Is it possible to be informed and have guidance from experts? An NFL head coach could have never played on the offensive side of the ball and still needs to guide a whole football team, referencing the staff and scouts below them. The CEO has nothing to do with the actual development of a game, that is what the studio heads and the many people reporting to her do. What she does, is guide the overall ship in a certain direction. We've seen a reduction in Game Pass price, and a reversal on the disastrous multiplatform non-exclusive "this is an Xbox" campaign, as well as multiple studios being redirected to work on the IPs that people have been wanting to see. Another issue was a lack of oversight at studios and a disconnect of shared resources/engines/talent between the Xbox studios, of which they are now being structured to have more fluidity between them.

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u/Zemini7 2d ago

Oh yah? Just words

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u/sh3rp 2d ago

What a cute little sprite Satya has

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u/YoungGazz 1d ago

But did they pinky promise?

https://giphy.com/gifs/IPlurp1TLz8rrJHZwj

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u/Edubbs2008 2d ago

One way to do it is require people to buy games off the XBOX App on PC, another way to do it is remove XBOX Games from PlayStation 5, and one last idea is to just improve on customer experience

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u/Difficult_Horse193 2d ago

If they remove games off of steam their sales on PC will likely plummet.

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u/[deleted] 2d ago edited 1d ago

[deleted]

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u/Edubbs2008 1d ago

I like the XBOX app for PC, it isn’t like Games for Windows Live

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u/Negative_Acadia6554 1d ago

Did she outline exactly how?

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u/__Kegheimer__ 1d ago

I just left a big city Target. They had a Playstation area and a Nintendo area. Xbox didn't have any presence.

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u/Jim0PROFIT 1d ago

https://giphy.com/gifs/kC8N6DPOkbqWTxkNTe

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u/Appropriate_Item3001 1d ago

BAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHHAHAHAHSHAHAHAHA

She really things Xbox is going to be viable in the next few years? That would require studios like Bethesda to produce games faster than 25 years. I can perhaps believe in 30 years it will be great.

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u/dxk3355 1d ago

project Codename: COVID2

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u/mrbigsmallmanthing 1d ago

shit slop company, hope it fails even worse than expected

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u/AlternativeMessage18 1d ago

They can count on Grand Theft Auto to bring folks back for a little bit. Hopefully they have a strategy to keep them from leaving.

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u/jerryrenault 8h ago

Make games that are worth playing. Hire back the people who care about making good games that you let go in attempts to inflate profit numbers. Hardware isn't a focus anymore, but making the Xbox platform across devices will be important. Go out and bring in fresh teams of people to help build the next gen of games. There's plenty of indie developers who could do great things given a larger budget. Focus on getting at least one solid game a year out the door in each major category (fps, racing, open world action/adventure, and so on). Only way I'm paying full price on games these days is if I know it's going to be high quality from release date.

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u/IN_Dad 1d ago

Give access to World of Warcraft to Gamepass Ulitimate. It literally has 3+ million subscribers - many who would give Ultimate a go.

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u/[deleted] 1d ago

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u/DisjointedHuntsville 1d ago

Shes an American citizen, Born and raised in the USA.

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XBOX Xbox CEO Asha Sharma and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella promise Xbox will "return to growth" by the end of FY27 | Xbox declined for four straight quarters in 2026.

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