Xbox founder and creator Seamus Blackley has just released an explosive interview to GamesBeat, in which he doesn't mince words against Microsoft's current strategy and also shares his opinion of the newly appointed Xbox CEO, Asha Sharma. According to Blackley, who first came up with the idea of a Microsoft console back in 1999, her mandate will be the same as a palliative doctor, ultimately sunsetting the whole division as Microsoft refocuses on its new core AI business.
Xbox, like a lot of businesses that aren’t the core AI business, is being sunsetted. They don’t say that, but that’s what’s happening. I expect that the new CEO, Asha Sharma, her job is going to be as a palliative care doctor who slides Xbox gently into the night.
[...] The natural consequence of the focus on AI is that AI abstracts every problem from the minds of the executives who believe in it. We’re abstracting the problem of games as well. There’s a core belief, and you can see it in what Satya said, that AI will subsume games like it will subsume everything. The job of all these people is to just gently usher all of these business units into the new world of AI. That’s what you’re seeing here.
[...] It would have been shocking if they had somebody in there in a meaningful role who was passionate about games, passionate about the creator-driven business of games, because it would be in direct conflict with everything else Microsoft is doing. Microsoft is a company that is now about enabling its customers by enabling AI to drive things. That’s at odds with the auteur model of any art, but specifically of games. Microsoft doesn’t have the problem that Apple does, or that Netflix does, where they have an auteur-driven content model to manage. Games are the only place where they have a content business.
His fears are compounded by the fact that Asha Sharma previously served as president of Microsoft's CoreAI product portfolio. It doesn't help that some gamers have already accused her of using an AI bot to interact with followers on X, though she rejected those accusations, and she previously stated that she doesn't want to flood the Xbox ecosystem with "soulless AI slop".
Xbox gamers have been mostly worried about Microsoft sunsetting its console hardware business, which is definitely a more real concern given dwindling sales and the multiplatform strategy. At this stage, it seems a little premature to think about the whole division being axed, though of course, it could still happen at some point in the future. For now, though, Microsoft is still planning to release a new Xbox console, possibly next year.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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