By Laurent Giret
Publication Date: 2026-06-06 17:33:00
After 12 long years at the head of Microsoft’s gaming division, Phil Spencer passed the Xbox CEO baton to Asha Sharma earlier this year, and the new exec aims to turn Xbox into “the number one gaming and entertainment company.” Tomorrow, the Xbox Games Showcase will be Microsoft’s opportunity to prove that it’s still long on gaming.
Sharma, who had no background in the video games industry, said in a recent interview with Bloomberg that her first assignment was to understand the “soul” of Xbox. Now, the exec said that “the next 100 days are … about resetting the business.”
I’ve been following Xbox and the video game industry for more than 10 years, and it’s been strange to see Microsoft spend close to 100 billion dollars on studio acquisitions all while seeing the Xbox brand slowly lose its relevancy. If the Xbox 360 generation was truly a golden era for the brand, the company never really recovered from the disastrous launch of the Xbox…