By Helen Vogelsong-Donahue
Publication Date: 2026-03-13 11:00:00
The gaming community freaked out last week when Seamus Blackley, the original creator of the Xbox, claimed that the console was going under in an interview with Gamesbeat.
However, if you read the interview or his comments about Bluesky, you’ll see that he meant something feels off at the core of Xbox out of: The console he built is in “distress.” Blackley speculated that Asha Sharma’s move from AI manager to executive vice president and CEO of Microsoft Gaming in February means the product is in “palliative care.”
Xbox is not closure, but many were quick to believe the headlines as there is currently a dark cloud over the industry. What happened?
While gaming experienced an unprecedented peak during the pandemic, artificial intelligence crept in behind it. The spread of AI in the gaming industry is already accelerating job losses and cheapening the work of developers at studios that are now under scrutiny from anti-AI gamers. Data centers have deprived the industry of RAM, resulting in a…
