Xbox CEO Confirms Positive Turnaround: “We’re Recovering After a Tough Period”

Microsoft recently wrapped up its latest fiscal quarter, and according to Xbox CEO Asha Sharma, the gaming division is on an upswing. During a recent town hall, she rallied her team around several recent achievements and outlined ambitious goals for the platform’s future. The significant restructuring, which included tough layoffs, has helped to halt the platform’s previous decline.

“We’re making the right decisions to reinvest in the business. After hitting an all-time low, we’ve begun to see growth, more than two to three times what we were, and we expect this trend to continue,” Sharma shared with her team, as reported. She highlighted the strong launches of titles like Minecraft Dungeons 2, Gears of War: E-Day, and World of Warcraft: Forever, along with a 30-percent increase in “brand sentiment” compared to last year.

Sharma also laid out plans to bolster Xbox as a console platform moving forward. This includes initiatives like Play Anywhere and Disc-to-Digital, as well as making Xbox development more accessible and enhancing the flexibility of Game Pass subscriptions. She even mentioned the addition of The Witcher 3 to Battle.net, hinting that this curated collaboration might not be the last on Blizzard’s PC launcher.

What’s likely to catch the attention of Xbox fans are Sharma’s comments regarding the upcoming Gen 10 hardware, codenamed Project Helix. “We are moving to a family of devices for Gen 10,” she stated. “There isn’t a single device that fits all. We will certainly have a great console first, but we also recognize that many players will be gaming on the go. There are certain things we excel at manufacturing, and there will be areas where we partner with others. We’ll share more details as our plans evolve. The operating system is shaping up nicely, and we’re very excited about it.”

We might already be getting a glimpse of this strategy with the current Xbox Series X/S consoles, gaming PCs running Windows, and the third-party Xbox Ally X from Asus. It remains to be seen how many devices will be part of this Gen 10 “family” and how effectively the operating system will unify the Xbox experience across them.

However, many within Xbox may find it difficult to fully celebrate this momentum just yet. Chief content officer Matt Booty mentioned last month that Xbox is only 75 percent through its challenging reset, with hundreds more layoffs expected in the coming months. Additionally, some of the company’s major gaming initiatives under Sharma, like the reboot of Halo under Activision, will take years to materialize.