Xbox CEO Asha Sharma outlines major reset amid cuts
Xbox CEO Asha Sharma does the impossible and sounds disconnected from reality by *videogame executive* standards. This is one of the most incredibly ridiculous things I’ve heard in my 20 years of following the game industry.
Commander Sterling607It’s stupid to think you’ll increase the user base by *any* amount with Xbox’s current strategy of studio closures and service enshittification, let alone suggest you can eclipse the Wii’s success by orders of magnitude. Saying this should be grounds to have your competency reassessed.
Skybrush Threepwood35Not that it's achievable by *any* means, but saying it while you're firing thousands of people and shutting down/divesting game studios left and right seems particularly unhinged "We want to reach 1 billion diners, that's why we're torching all the restaurants"
Amber34Sounds exactly like what a former AI-focused executive would say, though
Athena 🎙️💜StellarTemptation💜 Valentino's Chewtoy💜20MORE BIGGER UNLIMITED GORWTH UNLIMITED POTENTIAL UNLIMITED PROFITS NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE IF YOU BELIEVE HARD ENOUGH MILK YOUR USERBASE AND CUT COSTS AT EVERY TURN THIS CANNOT POSSIBLY FAILURE SUCCESS IS THE ONLY OUTCOME HEY WHY ARE MY WINGS STARTING TO MELT
The Indifferent One 🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️12It's like one of the ridiculous numbers that GW throw out in 40k lore, only less believable
Mat G11Probably *sex* doesn't have a billion daily users as an activity, and it's basically free. Doesn't even force microtransactions or always online!
Aidan O’Brien13Xbox: "We want to have 1 billion users a day" Also, Xbox, literally the same day: "We're firing all the artists who make the games you love"
Site Reliability Enby5At this point I doubt even a billion people use *windows* in a given day any more.
Fredrik Häthén4A chatbot told this utter delulu CEO to write this. I guaran-fucking-TEE it.
James just needs to apply himself4They let you just say stuff! You can go on stage and say some stuff and they let you!
Goddess Luna3The main thing that prevents me ever being an executive at a company like this isn't the fact I'm a communist, or my lack of experience in their industry. It's that my brain is too functional to say something that absurd sincerely and I'm bad at lying.
JuliNuoFooly2Actually she did a very good job making everyone focus on haha CEO math bad, woman CEO so dumb! And not 3200 layoffs with half enacted today. Everyone loves a snarky little haha bad at math article but it is all I am seeing around here and no focus on “they are making a thousand ppl unemployed now”
A lil Gremlin2"I want the impossible and when I don't get it I will murder every video game developer we own"- Xbox ceo
i think of this in conjunction some with the 90s and credit cards and credit card debt, especially as companies aren't paying employees enough to have disposable income, or are doing mass layoffs (like xbox under asha sharma). they just figure you'll Get The Money somehow. just not from them.
Colin Spacetwinks398years ago on twitter i went on about this phenomenon vis a vis streaming and cars talking about it as 'phantom money'. companies underpay and fire their own employees while assuming people will just get money from SOMEWHERE, cuz otherwise, they can't buy their products. x.com/spacetwinks/...
Alex17I think there's a similarity with how they view worker output, too. Layoff teams, increase scope, constantly demand changes as they trend-chase, etc. It's all fine because *surely* if the workers just put in enough effort then they will Get It Finished somehow. Surely there's blood in this stone.
Chowder (commissions open)5Lately I've begun to suspect that the people making these types of decisions think that if you simply put a poor person in enough debt you'll activate a gland in their body that secretes legal tender.
Unsurpassed Travesty3something something noted anti-semite shithead Henry Ford making sure his workers could afford model Ts
🏳️⚧️”FAE WRATH MODE ENGAGED”🦾9This is something I've thought that often bosses and those in charge of the economy never understand. "If I fire you, you'll find money from somewhere else" You employed that person, 9/10 most of thier money comes from you. Just replacing that is not a simple process.
Sisyphus, but for reducing tail latency4man I've really got to dig out my copy of the Marx-Engels Reader and do some rereading because this feels like it *must* be in there, the parallels with the classic modes of capitalist crisis (tendency of rate of profit to fall etc) are too obvious for it not to be but I can't remember *where*
🔆2This about sums up the attempt at replacing workforces with AI: "Surely I, Joe Businessowner will be the one person clever enough to not have to pay for labor, yet still benefit from a society of people with means."
"CEO Asha Sharma wants Xbox to reach 1bn players a day (it currently hits 1bn a year)." Oh.
Bruno Dias108what happens when you ask copilot for a business plan
SpeckObst26Maybe fixing the birth rates with ai will create new players.
CJ Melendez23Ah yes, reasonable expectations. The thing that’s been serving AAA so well.
Steve Martin19"Scale the business growth by 350x" "I don't think that's possi-" "SCALE IT"
Andy - gurtch19There are 8.x billion people on the planet, and she expects 12.5% of all of humanity to play on an Xbox device every day? If that’s the expectation, then let’s just throw in the towel now and save everybody the years of this same shit happening over and over again
Sauce_15That's some real, "GameStop is buying eBay" thinking. Yeesh.
H.K // デビル零 #PlayMoreVF55Basically, they want to be as popular as Coca-Cola, except that Coke is cheap, available globally, and doesn’t require an expensive console/PC and Internet to consume
Shaxbert 🔞38Well shit, as long as we're asking, I want renewable energy, free healthcare for all, trans rights, Constitutional abortion and all billionaires to be taxed back into the middle class- at least that'd be a net good for society
Garota de hambúrguer comendo anime21É bom ela começar a dar Xbox de graça pra todo mundo então pra conseguir esses números aí
Mark 🔜 Develop Brighton15Has someone told Asha the really crucial bit of information she seems to be lacking here.
Platy8"Platy quer ter um salario mensal de 10 mil reais sem fazer nada"
Ryan Higgins7It's nice to have dreams.
Andrew7I wonder if this is a case of A) she’s an idiot or B) she thinks the people she’s talking to are idiots
Daryl Baxter6They shouldn’t have held a showcase last month. Amongst many other things they shouldn’t have done over the last few years.
Zellia5This lacks ambition, Xbox should be aiming for like 100 gazillion players really
chris2k5Thousands of competent workers that actually get shit done and have become experts in their fields through sweat and tears losing their job security, and the person sitting on the gold throne at the top sustained by the corpses of laborers uttering one of the dumbest things imaginable 👍
CEO Asha Sharma wants Xbox to run a marathon, shoots off feet
Corey Brickley118I think basically every instance of companies going "we want to own the pipes and also the content that fills the pipes" has ended in disaster and this has been true since the 80s
Feather Dancer3I'm glad at least two studios are safely the fuck away and hopefully the rest can get their security back but man. She's Stupid stupid, now wouldn't be surprised if she was the one wanting 30% profit per console as she has the same idiotic mindset.
SinfulGourmand1Don’t worry. She’ll just generate new ones with the power of AI
it brings me no joy to play the "fake gamer" card on Xbox CEO Asha Sharma
Bob Mackey64it completely checks out that the CEO of a major company has absolutely no experience with the product and despises the little piggies who want it
CurlzMT5i have a hard time wrapping my brain around the concept of a person alive in 2026 who has never played a video game. my 74 year old dad plays video games
Sean4Like she doesn’t need it have played games before, but she def has no understanding of the industry based on her aspirations of a billion players a day (and honestly how much leas time was she given before she got the job?) Microsoft’s main issue is not understanding games don’t work like software
Quintalian1(through gritted teeth) Clearly has not learned or understood enough. Should've given it more time to sink in.
Xbox is preparing to lay off around 3,200 individuals, part ways with Compulsion Games, Double Fine, Undead Labs, Ninja Theory, and possibly Arkane Lyon in what CEO Asha Sharma is calling "the most significant res... https://kotaku.com/xbox-layoff-3200-most-significant-restructure-history-2000712836
Jon11The State of Decay studio too!? Oooof... Yeahhhh, this is beyond rough.
Arc Ray☢️🐑🎭🎈7i guess they saw what Sony was doing and went "we cannot be outdone in racing to the bottom. fire everybody that makes games for our home console!"
jzen6And how many millions of dollars will they be saving by cutting C-suite jobs at Microslop?
『BTW』 BeanTheWaif || Commissions Permanently Open!🔞4There's gonna be no one left to make any fucking games
Ugly Bob2There are entire communities that are smaller than this layoff.
Matt McMuscles954Turns out the secret to the problem of not having any exclusive games to attract new customers is get rid of the studios that were making you exclusive games.
Jaina Rodríguez-Grey128In 2025, Xbox made about 24 billion. Conservatively, that means about 700 million of that was profit. In a year with wars on 2 (sometimes 3) continents, broken supply chains, economic downturn, and skyrocketing hardware prices, Xbox still made almost a billion in net profit and it wasn’t enough.
loren schmidt58i was already boycotting microsoft because they are on the BDS list, but this makes me wish i could double boycott them.
Jimmy's Hell Cousin51I don’t know why this isn’t being reported as a company buying up an entire industry, extracting all the money from it to power their plagiarism machine, and then laying everyone off destroying said industry
Jiikae47Past week has felt like the E3 of bad gaming news
Nessa ✨41me, loading a grenade launcher and pointing it at my foot: it's a restructure plan
Sherveen Uduwana38Really hate the framing of these layoffs as a reset when they've been doing layoffs again and again for the past two years. Despite admitting they had a 3% profit margin (AFTER all their acquisitions) this fiscal year. Profitable, Just not as much as their competitors. So lay everyone off I guess
REVY29‘Most Significant Restructure In Xbox History’ And it's just firing and selling everyone
𝕮0𝖋𝖋𝖎𝖓𝕮𝖚𝖓𝖙26Fuck @microsoft.com Fuck @xbox.com fuck every one of these vampires (derogatory). I genuinely can't wait to see these businesses crash and fucking burn.
Quinn Stokan (Chris Voiceman)23Look at the history of any big game development icon and you'll see a string of small roles in small projects, and often failed projects too, but it was the luxury to learn from those roles that made them who they are. Once they retire, they'll leave no successors because they keep getting fired.
I gotta be honest it's a real shame people tagged PlayStation with the no games label because the funniest part of Asha Sharma wanting a billion players a day is that there's nothing for a billion people to play on Xbox.
𝐔𝐧𝐛𝐥𝐨𝐜𝐤𝐚𝐛𝐥𝐞 𝐆𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐂𝐫𝐚𝐛31And with all the layoffs there never will be!
Stormy10Playstation having Halo now really should be a lot funnier to people than it is
Don Quiznostes9It was funny to say the PlayStation had no games (and it’s paid dividends now they’re literally about to stop making physical games) but I gotta admit it was funniest when Xbox true believers got in on the joke as if their situation wasn’t somehow worse
5hawn4All the PlayStation players and all the Xbox games should come together for one huge super console platform The Dreamcast 2
shadowquin.bsky.social4No one plays Xbox, that’s why no one’s there aren’t any games on it now
kyuseishun.bsky.social3now its funnier cuz we can do both
BREAKING: Microsoft is spinning off four Xbox studios as part of significant gaming cuts. Double Fine and Compulsion Games are going independent, and Ninja Theory and Undead Labs are leaving Xbox to new management. Full details and Xbox CEO's memo here👇 www.theverge.com/news/961546/...
Jared Saxon3Honestly I guess I was expecting something worse.
Andrew McCarthy2I just don’t have the words mate. Just awful awful news. Any C-suite exec who was around when these decisions where made (acquisition, previous redundancy decisions) needs to be held to account and go.
ketchUP_reLoaded2This stinks. Sorry for all those impacted, wishing them speedy employment.
C-Hand2No studio closures, no cancelled games… I was expecting much worse. My condolences to those who lost their jobs nonetheless
Very Frank1$75.4b to purchase ABK. All the cod in all the oceans isn't gonna make that back in our lifetimes
I wonder, who did Mojang and King use to report to? Was it a stupid infinite chain of command?
Lance Silk / ランス・シルク🎮2Unlike Tango in 2024 I'm totally thankful with 4 Xbox studios going independent rather being shut down BUT as longest they DON'T GO to Sony or Nintendo then it should be fine of what it is.
Tyler Miller2Xbox update: 3,200 layoffs over the next year. 1,600 are happening today. Compulsion and Double Fine are going indie with their IP intact. Undead Labs and Ninja Theory are getting new ownership. Arkane Lyon is in talks to see what happens to them.
XBOX CEO Asha Sharma says some parts of the company had 14 layers of management They will be reduced to no more than 5 layers — and in some cases, just 3 "That complexity has slowed decisions, blurred accountability, & made it harder to deliver for players. As we reset XBOX, we will simplify [it]"
Shawn12That’s pretty much bog standard “we cut a lot of senior people and middle management because they’re expensive”
Gordon Eldest4Not sure this reflects reality feels cherry-picked. Change was needed, but this level of disruption isn’t right for the community. External developers were hit first and will move on. The real question is whether Xbox can maintain momentum: survival, yes or slow death expansion, unlikely.
Between These Lines - ¡Aupa Andoni! 🌈 ⚽ 🏈 🏀⚾🏒2I'm going to simplify my Xbox by using it as a doorstop.
Paranoid Android 🤖2…and we decided to let Clippy AI speed up all the game design bc xBox, it’s for the playas…
SP242She should start with herself.
Microsoft's new gaming cuts, some 3,200 jobs impacted through June 2027, follow cuts of over 2,500 in 2024 and scores in 2025 A brutal sequence of events The latest round, under Xbox's new CEO, spins out smaller studios and slashes Xbox platform team www.gamefile.news/p/xbox-to-cu...
Stephen Totilo34Four studios being divested (Compulsion, Undead Labs, DoubleFine, Ninja Theory) account for around 350 of the job cuts, I'm told. Arkane could add 100+ more to that total While the fate of those studios will draw a lot of attention, the lion's share of the 3,200 cuts are outside those teams
Christian Kündig2“Microsoft was funding much of the rest of the Xbox gaming team, the source said, rather than being deeply funded itself.” - shouldn’t this say “Minecraft was funding…”?
Shawn1That’ll get them to a leaner meaner last place. They’re not going to overtake Sony, Nintendo, TikTok, Instagram, Steam or whoever they think they can compare favorably to. Maybe Fortnite since the bloom is coming off the rose over at Epic.
John Linneman265The combination of these layoffs being talked about for weeks combined with Sony blowing up traditional console gaming last week certain lessens the impact. It's just like...well, more bad stuff is happening, I guess that's just how it goes now. :(
Stephen Totilo130Microsoft's big E3 2018 new studio reveal is a shot of a bygone era - Then-new studio Initiative shut in 2025 - Undead Labs / Ninja theory now spinning off to new owner/owners - Compulsion returned to management DoubleFine, acquired in 2019, also back to management Playground remains
Steve Saylor18In a world where everything sucks, this is less sucky than it could've been. Laying off 3200 people is still extremely sucky no matter how much silver lining there is.
P-O Desbiens6may this keep radicalizing people the contradictions are heightening like crazy right now
Mike Stout5Imagine paying billions of dollars for something, then smashing it and walking away.
Neal Ronaghan3The only silver lining is some studios avoided closure. But none of them should have been in this position that was Xbox’s own stupid making.
asha sharma going "we're gonna have 1 billion players a day" is great because it really shows you how, even with raw numbers in their faces that say the xbox x/s only sold like 30 million consoles, CEOs live in a completely different reality where hype and ideas are all that actually matter
mattachine meow machine13like i doubt there are even 1 billion gamers on the planet. the playstation 2, history's most popular console of all time, only sold 160 million units and that was a quarter of a decade ago lol
goaty goats (Norever Plaza out now!)2you just gotta wonder what satya's "conversations" with his AI are like. obviously sycophantic delusions but like, if it's THIS level of deluded? oh to read those logs…
Ash Electric2When a CEO comes in and basically expects everyone to have superpowers I basically just start the layoff countdown again 😭
himbobottomus.bsky.social1theyre counting candy crush players