By Tom Warren
Publication Date: 2026-04-23 17:19:00
Xbox CEO Asha Sharma has had a busy week. Sharma held an internal town hall with Xbox employees today, just days after announcing an Xbox Game Pass price cut, commenting on the status of the Xbox mobile store, and teasing a mysterious Xbox and Discord partnership. One of the items on the agenda for the employee all-hands was scrapping Microsoft Gaming.
Sources familiar with the meeting tell me that Sharma announced that Microsoft is returning to using Xbox for its gaming division, instead of Microsoft Gaming. “Xbox needs to be our identity,” said Sharma, noting that Microsoft Gaming was a departure from that.
Sharma’s decision to return to the Xbox division is part of her promise of a “return of Xbox,” which increasingly looks like a way to put Xbox fans first and correct some previous strategic mistakes. Earlier this week, Sharma reversed a decision to add future Call of Duty titles to Xbox Game Pass, a decision that had originally been debated fiercely inside Microsoft…
