Xbox CEO Fires Xbox Execs - 'It's time to FIX this brand'
Xbox's new CEO Asha Sharma is laser focused on leading the Xbox comeback!
The Skinny
🔥 New Xbox CEO Asha Sharma sent an internal memo saying “it is too hard to ship impact quickly”
🧠 Four of five new hires come directly from Microsoft’s CoreAI division — Xbox is going full AI-pivot
📺 Hardware revenue fell 33% last quarter — nine straight quarters of decline
🎮 Project Helix (next-gen Xbox console) is still years out, with a memory crisis threatening delays
💸 Right now might be the best time to buy Xbox hardware at a discount — see picks below
Xbox has a new CEO, a brutal earnings report, and an executive roster that just got overhauled. Asha Sharma — who took over from Phil Spencer earlier this year — sent an internal memo to staff this week that reads less like a pep talk and more like a diagnosis: the division is too slow, too inward, and lacking depth in the fundamentals. Then she went and hired four executives from her old AI division to help fix it. The reaction from the gaming community has been... complicated.
What Sharma Actually Said
The memo didn’t dance around the problems. Sharma wrote: “We need to evolve how we work and how we are organized across our platform. 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.”
That’s a sitting CEO publicly stating that her division is bureaucratic, disconnected from its audience, and missing core competencies. For a company that spent years projecting confidence under Phil Spencer, it’s a significant shift in tone — and arguably an honest one.
The five new leaders she’s bringing in reflect where she wants to go:
Jared Palmer (ex-CoreAI VP of Product, ex-GitHub SVP) → VP of Engineering, developer tools and infrastructure
Tim Allen (ex-CoreAI VP of Design) → Leading design across Xbox
Jonathan McKay (ex-CoreAI, ex-Meta, ex-OpenAI) → Head of Growth
Evan Chaki (ex-CoreAI GM) → Forward-deployed engineering teams
David Schloss (ex-Instacart Sr. Director) → Subscription and cloud business
Four of five come straight from CoreAI. Whether that’s a strength or a red flag depends on how you feel about AI executives running a gaming division.
Who’s Out — and What That Signals
Two notable exits: Kevin Gammill, who ran Xbox user experience, game development, and publishing platforms, is leaving the company entirely. Roanne Sones, who led Xbox devices and ecosystem, is taking a leave of absence before shifting to an advisory role.
Gammill’s departure in particular is worth noting — his portfolio touched the exact areas Sharma says need the most work. Reading between the lines, the new leadership direction and the old guard’s priorities didn’t align.
Jason Ronald was elevated to lead Project Helix — Xbox’s next-gen console — and platform accountability. That’s a significant vote of confidence in someone who’s been deep in Xbox hardware for years.
The Numbers Behind the Shake-Up
The memo didn’t come in a vacuum. Xbox hardware revenue dropped 33% last quarter — the ninth consecutive quarter of decline. Console sales are down, the Xbox Series X is in an awkward late-cycle position, and Project Helix (which will support both Xbox and PC games natively) isn’t expected to reach developers until 2027, with the memory crisis already threatening delays and a price hike.
Sharma is essentially trying to stabilize and restructure a division mid-freefall, while also laying the groundwork for a console that’s still years away. It’s a tough hand to play.
What This Means If You’re Buying Xbox Right Now
If you’re on the fence about jumping into Xbox, the honest read is this: now is probably the best time to buy current-gen hardware. Prices are soft, Game Pass is deep, and there’s no reason to wait for Project Helix if you just want to play games today.
If you’re holding for next-gen, Helix is real — Jason Ronald’s elevation signals it’s still a priority — but a 2027 developer kit timeline means a consumer launch is probably 2028 at the earliest.
🛒 Top Picks
Current-gen Xbox is on sale in a lot of places right now. Here’s what to grab.
🥇 Best Overall: Xbox Series X — the full-power current-gen console, 4K/120fps, massive Game Pass library
🥈 Runner-Up: Xbox Game Pass Ultimate (12 Month) — hundreds of games day one, cloud gaming included, best value in gaming
🥉 Best Value: Xbox Series S — $300, all-digital, same Game Pass access — perfect if you don’t need 4K
The Bottom Line
Sharma’s memo is the most candid thing an Xbox executive has said publicly in years. Whether the AI-heavy leadership injection actually fixes the speed and community disconnect problems remains to be seen — but at minimum, she’s naming the right problems. Xbox’s long game is Project Helix and a platform-agnostic future. The short game is surviving long enough to get there.
If you’re a current Xbox owner, nothing about today changes your day-to-day. If you’re a potential buyer, current-gen discounts make now a reasonable entry point. And if you’re watching this story because you care where Xbox goes next — so are we.
Image credits: Microsoft / Xbox