Xbox CEO Outlines Growth Strategy Following Recent Layoffs and a Challenging Year

A recent memo from Asha Sharma has surfaced within Xbox, outlining her key priorities and objectives aimed at revitalizing Microsoft’s gaming division following the layoff of 1,600 employees earlier this month. The strategy includes a bold target of reaching 1 billion daily users, up from the current 100 million.

Details of Sharma’s plan were shared by an outlet, which provided insights from her memo sent to Xbox staff on July 30. In its latest earnings report, Microsoft revealed a significant drop in revenue across both hardware and gaming services, with an overall decline of $1.7 billion for the year. To reverse this trend, Xbox’s new CEO has identified four main priorities for the upcoming fiscal year:

CORE: Strengthen our platform, led by console

CONTENT: Grow great games into global franchises

CREATION: Make Minecraft the world’s creator platform

CONNECTION: Extend the worlds that fans love

While these priorities all start with the letter C, the specific actions required to achieve them are less clear. Looking ahead to 2028 and 2029, the plan aims to “move into businesses producing meaningful player value and revenue acceleration.” By 2030, the goal is to be “halfway to our long-term daily-player target with sustained double-digit growth in players and engagement and industry-leading margins.”

In her earlier “reset” memo, which announced cuts affecting 3,600 Xbox employees over the next year and the closure or spin-off of several studios, Sharma expressed her ambition for Xbox to be among the few companies that “entertains” over a billion people daily. The current memo reiterated that Xbox is at 100 million users, indicating that achieving half a billion in just four years would necessitate extraordinary growth of nearly 50 percent each year.

Sharma described Xbox as “one of the largest stadiums in the world,” a metaphor that echoes Google’s unsuccessful Stadia venture. She emphasized that while the Xbox console remains a “flagship experience,” the company will also seek to attract new players through PC, cloud, and other platforms. Long-term strategies include monetizing major franchises like Fallout “across film, television, consumer products, sponsorship, live experiences, and forming new partnerships globally, including in China,” alongside increased investment in Candy Crush and Minecraft.

At one point, the CEO highlighted the importance of focusing not only on the company’s biggest franchises but also on its “biggest new ideas.” It seems we’ll have to stay tuned to see what those innovations might entail.