For nylig blev det afsløret at Phil Spencer trækker sig fra Xbox, og får selskab af Sarah Bond, også. De to erstattes af Asha Sharma, en 36-årig leder, der tidligere har stået i spidsen for Microsofts CoreAI-initiativ.
Der er endnu delte meninger om det er positivt at der sker et lederskifte, eller om dette spår Xbox-brandet en skidt fremtid. Xbox-medstifter Seamus Blackley lægger ikke skjul på hvad han mener. I et interview med VGC siger Blackley, at dette virker som et slags dødsstød til Xbox til fordel for yderligere investeringer i AI.
"Satya Nadella has made an incredible number of bets and invested an incredible amount of money and credibility in the transform model AI future. 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.
Det lyder enormt deprimerende, hvis rigtigt, og Blackley peger ikke specifikt på Sharma, men på CEO Satya Nadella som værende manden der virkelig presser tingene i den her retning:
"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."