A new report from CNBC reveals that Xbox chief executive officer Asha Sharma is bringing over more of her former CoreAI team to the Xbox side of Microsoft in an overhaul of Xbox's executive team with five new members in total, the fifth coming instead from Sharma's other previous home of Instacart. Part of the move also includes the dismissal of more of the old guard, as one moves to an advisory role, and the other leaves the company.
Since Asha Sharma stepped into the role of chief executive officer of Xbox, the former CoreAI president has been establishing what her tenure will look like. So far, that's included kicking off the introduction to next-gen Xbox with Project Helix, a refreshed sense of transparency between the players and the division's leadership on the platform's direction, and a price cut for Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, to name a few of what's been happening for the platform in the last two months.
Now, she's putting her team together on an executive level, which, as mentioned, includes removing more of who was left over from Phil Spencer's era. Kevin Gammill, corporate vice president of Xbox user experience, game development, and publishing platforms, is leaving the company, and Roanne Sones, corporate vice president for Xbox devices and ecosystem, will move to an advisory role following a leave of absence over the course of this summer.
CNBC also notes that both Gammill and Sones have been with Microsoft for more than two decades, and while it's worth questioning who Sharma is bringing in to take over their duties, it also seems like those are two poignant shuffles for departments that have perhaps needed a change for a while. The buck for their time in each role still stops with Spencer, of course, but as Sharma wrote in a memo seen by CNBC, "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."
As for who is joining the Xbox team, all of them are coming from a part of Sharma's past. Jared Palmer, previously the CoreAI vice president of product and senior vice president of GitHub, will join the Xbox team as a vice president of engineering and will also act as an advisor to Sharma with regard to "taste," according to the report.
Tim Allen, previously the vice president of design at CoreAI and GitHub senior vice president of design and research, is now leading design at Xbox. Jonathan McKay, who also recently held executive roles at Meta and OpenAI will become the head of growth at Xbox after most recently being the head of growth for CoreAI, and lastly, David Schloss will move from being Instacart's senior director of product growth to lead the subscription and cloud business of Xbox.
It's altogether a major leadership shakeup, and both the words in her memo and her choices for her leadership cabinet should not be overlooked. Sharma called the move, "bringing in new leaders with consumer and technical expertise we do not have yet," seemingly as a direct call out to a gap left by Spencer's era that needed to be filled.
For all of the challenges ahead of Sharma and her newly established leadership team, it's worth noting that her first two months in the role have clearly brought a new energy to the platform. So far, she and Matt Booty have been saying and doing all the right things, but these early words and actions won't have an impact on Microsoft's portfolio or in players' minds for months to come.
The introduction of this new team has already reignited concerns that we'll start to see Microsoft's Gaming Copilot find more real estate in the Xbox platform, which could very well be true, though how Sharma's regime deals with introducing Microsoft's AI efforts into Xbox is a question yet to be answered. Just like how we're still waiting for an answer on what the approach to first-party game exclusivity going forward.
It's interesting to see Sharma continue to set up her tenure at Xbox as this new era for the platform begins because of how much it could mean for the industry if we would have a return of all three console makers being incredibly competitive.
The video game industry is no different from most in that it is at its best when its biggest players are competitive. It's a better industry for everyone involved, players included, when Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo are firing on all cylinders. Hopefully, we'll start to see Xbox catch up in the next few years and return to a higher competitive level.
About the author: David has been writing about videogames, technology, and culture since 2020, with a focus on reporting daily news across multiple publications, including GameDaily.Biz, GameSkinny, and PlayStation Universe before joining Wccftech in 2025. David started contributing as Canada/US reporter for Wccftech's gaming section in 2025. Besides being up-to-date on the industry's movements, he loves interviewing developers, reviewing games, and writing intricate essays about the symbolism and layered meanings to be found in rich narratives as he's done for publications like GamesIndustry.Biz, LostInCult, and others. Outside of games he loves movies, music, theatre, his hometown, and his family, though not necessarily in that order.
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