Sudden change often brings a variety of emotions. It usually starts with shock and as your brain wraps itself around what happened, you will begin to feel many things about the present and the future. Confusion, nervousness, excitement, fear…you get the idea. With Friday’s news of major change coming at Xbox with Phil Spencer and Sarah Bond leaving and Asha Sharma in with Matt Booty being promoted, Xbox fans, and gamers in general, went through all the emotions all at once. 

Truthfully, all those emotions are valid, and as someone who has been gaming exclusively on an Xbox since Call of Duty 4 came out in 2007 and invested tens of thousands of dollars into the platform, I certainly went through them all on my own the last 24 or so hours. But what does this massive change truly mean, and can we look at things objectively to try and sort through it? I’m certainly going to try. 

The End Of An Era

Before we look to the future, we should take a moment to acknowledge both the past and the immediate future, and what all went down. Phil Spencer retiring isn’t all that surprising. He has been with Microsoft for as long as I have been alive, starting in 1988. He was one of the original employees of Xbox and at nearly 40 years of service most people are retiring, or at least thinking about it.

Since taking over as the head of Xbox, things have dramatically shifted for the company, for better or worse. If the 360 was the height of Xbox, the Xbox One was the low and the Xbox Series S/X isn’t fairing much better. Don’t get me wrong as an Xbox gamer I have enjoyed the consoles, but from a console business perspective things haven’t looked great in a while. 

It hasn’t all been bad though. When Spencer took the reins for Xbox, the software side of things was dire. For years, the running joke was that Xbox had no games. And while it took a while to get going, and multiple studio and publisher acquisitions, Xbox is arguably the best publisher in the world today, with a wide variety of IP’s with something for everyone. 

He also ushered in Xbox Game Pass. Now how you feel about Xbox Game Pass will vary depending on who you are. The idea of it is fantastic for most consumers. Pay a fee every month and get access to hundreds of games and tons of them on launch day. How good it is for developers and the overall business has been up for much debate, but up until the most recent price increase, it was most certainly a good deal for the consumer. Pricing in 2026 is rich for many, but in many cases is still a good deal overall. 

But Phil’s legacy might end up being what he did last, by breaking the traditional mold of games being locked to a single platform as Xbox brings many of their games to rival PlayStation and Nintendo platforms. It was a decision that has left many Xbox fans frustrated and felt like the company stopped caring about them and Xbox hardware.

And while it certainly helped drive revenue as games like Forza Horizon 5 and Sea of Thieves sold well on PlayStation, it may have done more bad than good for the brand long term. I’ve often said I don’t necessarily care about Xbox taking their games to other platforms from a personal standpoint. More people playing the games is never a bad thing. However I did question how it would affect my console of choice long term. Phil said all the right things, but at the end of the day would Microsoft stick with it if the console itself continues to fail.

It’s also quite interesting that at first glance the new leadership looks like they might be doing a 180 on these decisions. I long thought this new direction for Xbox was spearheaded by Satya Nadella and not Phil and former President Sarah Bond. We may never know, but the messaging so far coming from Sharma kind of makes it seem like it was Phil and Sarah’s vision all along.

The Return Of Xbox?

So now lets shift to the immediate and long term future of Xbox under CEO Asha Sharma and CCO Matt Booty. We’ve seen a pretty dramatic shift in tone already from Sharma since taking the position. What stood out to me most was her saying they are bringing the “return of Xbox” and recommitting to the Xbox community.

What exactly that is going to entail we will simply have to wait and see. I’ve seen the speculation. Everything from the death of Game Pass, the return of exclusives and just about anything else in between. And truthfully, I could see any, or all of these options. It sounds like everything is on the table, and that is a good thing. New leadership brings new ideas.

I’ve long said that Xbox should have done two things with all their new studios. They should have at least given them all a chance as exclusives to see what kind of impact they would have. Just look at 2026 as an example. A lineup of Forza Horizon 6, Fable, Gears of War: E-Day, Halo: Campaign Evolved and who knows what else is a stellar lineup on paper. Could they have moved significant units and consoles? Maybe. But at least 3 of those are going to other platforms so we will never know.

The fact that they promoted Matt Booty might be pretty telling here too. In all the emails during the Activision FTC trial it was Booty who was pushing hard to crush the competition and make all these games exclusive. I’m sure he still feels that way and will likely be pushing hard for that.

The second thing I said they should do is remove day 1 games on Xbox Game Pass and go to more of a PlayStation Plus model. It’s pretty clear that Xbox needs their games to actually move units in order to justify making the games. That’s why they expanded to these other platforms in the first place. If they wait a year to put a game on Game Pass but sell a few million copies first, that is good business.

Of course such a drastic moves will have blow back. They will have some people unsubscribe to Game Pass if you do that. But if they price it right it can still work, and the sales of these games will offset the monthly losses.

And if you were going to do these drastic things, new leadership is the one to do it. Even if Spencer wanted to do what I’m suggesting it would be much more difficult for him as it would be admitting he was wrong. At least now if Sharma does it, she can point to previous management and wanting to switch things up. The time is now to be bold.

Again this is all just speculation and reading into what Sharma has said the last 24 hours. Either way she has at least got some time as these changes cant be done overnight. I’ve also said what if they put all these games onto PlayStation and then went back to exclusive for the next game. Someone playing and falling in love with Forza Horizion 6 on PlayStation might be more likely to buy an Xbox if suddenly the next game is only on that platform. I don’t think this was their actual plan, but the potential is now there to actually do it.

For now I’m cautiously optimistic on this future. I’ll see what Sharma, Booty and the rest of the leadership are cooking up and give them at least a year, possibly two to see how it shakes out. Messaging at least is on point, but for years we saw great messaging from Xbox and poor execution.

Bringing The Community Feeling Back

Lastly we have to at least touch on the early returns from Xbox, and in particular Asha when it comes to community engagement. The higher ups from Xbox used to be very community driven. Xbox Fan Fest was a great thing for the community and Phil, Aaron Greenberg and others would routinely interact with the community online. The last year or 2 that has faded significantly.

Now while some argued it was fake or weird to engage with a community like they did, it made them more real to the community. People related to them more and felt a connection with them. Asha is engaging online quite a bit so far, so much so that some think she’s using the AI to reply to people. While funny to think about given her previous position, I’m sure she is the one actually responding.

I simply hope that is isn’t just lip service and she is actually listening to the community. She is saying all the right things, but saying and doing are two different things. I also hope someone at Xbox is telling her who to avoid dealing with as we all know social media is full of bad actors.

Reasons To Be Worried

While I have been optimistic so far, there are certainly reasons to be worried. I always said Spencer and Bond were the only reasons Xbox still existed within Microsoft. With them gone is Xbox on solid ground? As I keep harping on the messaging seems strong and seems like it is, but only time will tell.

I’m also worried about Sharma’s background and how invested she is in the gaming aspect. As we all know Microsoft is all in on AI these days, especially Satya Nadella. The fact that the new CEO of Xbox was the previous boss of CoreAI for Microsoft has me worried.

It’s not even all about the AI aspect either. If they start going full AI in gaming then ya that’s a major issue. If they just use AI to help streamline some things and make development easier and faster while maintaining jobs I’m fine with that. My bigger issue is I don’t think Nadella is all in on gaming and that Sharma is simply the gaming mouthpiece for Nadella. I truly hope this isn’t the case, but it has crossed my mind.

There’s also the fact that new doesn’t always mean good and better. No doubt Sharma will have have new ideas, but will they land right with gamers. I’m again hopeful, but we shall see.

Lastly, and this is one I personally don’t care as much about, is Sharma’s seemingly minimal experience with gaming. I don’t think that’s a major issue as she is running the business and we’ve seen many gaming executives who don’t game. But I know this is an issue to some. It’s already come up online, to the point where people were digging into her Xbox Live Profile.

I actually found this kind of funny since she “only” has 10,000 Gamerscore since starting her profile last month. That is more Gamerscore and gaming than many of these people attacking her online do in a year, so not a big deal to me.

What’s The Real Story With Sarah Bond?

Finally, we have to talk about Sarah Bond. She was often pegged as the heir apparent to Spencer whenever this day came, and yet in the end she wasn’t. Sarah seemed like the one leading the charge on the new vision for Xbox. A powerful PC like console, no more exclusives and all the rest. It was bold, and it may be the reason why she’s no longer there.

We have nothing about her sudden departure other than it is said she resigned on Friday. There’s really two schools of thought here. Either she didn’t get the job she long thought she was being prepped for and quit, or she was actually let go and they said you can walk on your own terms instead.

If I was a gambling man (does opening packs of Pokemon cards count?) I’d say it was the former. There’s also the possibility she was just wanting to move on and thought this was the right time. 8 years in a tech job like that is an eternity for most. Whatever the reasons for her departure was it is unfortunate. We will have to see if we ever hear the true story and where she goes next.

However it is now time to look ahead. The immediate future looks great with the 25th anniversary celebrations. From there, let’s hope Xbox truly is back.