Asha Sharma has now been the Xbox CEO for 100 days, following her surprising elevation to the role earlier this year. Under Sharma’s predecessor, Phil Spencer, Xbox-exclusive games migrated to PlayStation 5 even as Xbox console users have continued to ask for more exclusives. Sharma has previously indicated a willingness to reconsider exclusivity going forward, but now she’s shared her belief that Xbox needs exclusives to shore up its future.
“We’re the number two publisher in the world and in order to be a great publisher, you must have your games reach large audiences to play,” said Sharma while appearing on Bloomberg’s recent live event. “At the same time, we’re increasingly becoming a platform. In order to be a platform, you must have exclusive content and … we’re looking at that very closely. I think that we have to be very thoughtful about each title on how we want to think about it and learn from similar cases in the industry. And that’s what we’re doing.”
While looking ahead to her next 100 days, Sharma noted that she would love to see Xbox “be the number one gaming and entertainment company.” However, she acknowledged that the gaming division is struggling.
“We’re long on gaming, we’re long on Xbox,” said Sharma. “We’ll keep investing, but we’ve got work to do. You shared the numbers, we’re not in a healthy spot and so you know the next 100 days is going to be about resetting the business … We need to look at how we’re investing, how we’re prioritizing, change how we operate in order to return to growth, in order to be where the world plays.”
Sharma also directly addressed the fact that console prices are rising during this generation instead of falling as they had in previous generations. To counter that, she said “it will require fundamental change in terms of how we innovate and how we think about the business models and how we go bring this to market.”
“The biggest challenge and opportunity is how do you make affordable products during that time?,” said Sharma when talking about the ongoing memory shortages and AI-driven expenses. “And that’s what the next hundred days will be about.”
She went on to say that pulling co-pilot from Xbox was her decision, and it was done because players weren’t excited about that feature.
“We’re going to be really thoughtful about how we ship AI,” said Sharma. “My job is to think about where we invest, what we prioritize, and how we operate.”
Sharma went on to credit Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella for giving her the “latitude to make the best decisions for our players.” She also reiterated her belief in AI’s benefits as a tool for game development.
Under Sharma’s watch, Xbox recently had a light rebrand to XBOX, while lowering the price of Game Pass and removing new Call of Duty titles from Xbox Game Pass at launch. Microsoft will hold its next Xbox Xbox Games Showcase on Sunday, June 7.
