A new summer for Xbox: Asha Sharma overhauls leadership

Asha Sharma, the new CEO for Xbox, is making changes to the brand. Sharma has already delivered on many of her promises, such as reducing the price of Xbox Live, changing the logo, and announcing future projects.  

 Since becoming the new leader of the platform, Sharma has committed to a business shift that focuses on community engagement and scaling back to prioritise what matters. With a new visual identity, price cuts, and innovation, Sharma is making an effort to re-engage the community. 

 She has also made several leadership changes to the platform team, bringing in more technical expertise from companies such as CoreAI and Meta, where Sharma herself previously worked. According to Kotaku, Sharma has brought in “leaders with consumer and technical expertise”, whose skills will allow the company to progress faster in what matters. 

With a new visual identity, price cuts, and innovation, Sharma is making an effort to re-engage the community. 

Asha Sharma has made several major changes since becoming Xbox’s CEO, stating that “we need to evolve how we work.” After significant declines in the gaming company’s revenue over the last few quarters, Sharma is making changes. 

 Before Sharma took over, Xbox had been struggling for the last six quarters with declining sales and a weakened brand image. Sharma’s strategy has been to focus on community values and the platform’s future. 

 For example, in just a couple of months, Sharma delivered on promises to reduce prices, change branding, and announce future projects – most notably the newest console, announced under the name of Project Helix. The brand has also re-evaluated its visual identity and the focus of its consoles. 

 The new official logo was updated to match the brand’s pivot to the original Xbox name, away from Microsoft Gaming.  

With a new visual identity, price cuts, and innovation, Sharma is making an effort to re-engage the community. 

 In April, the Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription, which gives users access to hundreds of games to download or stream, was cut from $29.99 to $22.99.  

Under Sharma’s leadership, the brand is also reportedly focusing on human-made products, having “no tolerance for bad AI” in games.  

There have also been changes to marketing, with the company scrapping both old advertisements, such as the previous ‘This is an Xbox’ campaign, and the integration of Copilot, Microsoft’s popular AI agent, into Xbox.  

Sharma, who shared on X that the company would “begin to retire features that don’t align with where we’re headed”, has already stopped the development.  

Asha Sharma has been posting regular updates on X about the direction the company plans to take under new leadership, promoting direct interaction and faster response times to users and console players.  

The appointment of Asha Sharma is significant both at Xbox, where she has already made several huge changes, and the general gaming industry. As CEO, she leads one of the world’s largest gaming platforms, including several franchises.  

Sharma’s takeover gives visibility to women in gaming.

This is a huge achievement for women in the tech field, challenging a heavily male-dominated industry and hopefully leading a shift towards more inclusivity in its executive teams.  

Sharma’s takeover gives visibility to women in gaming. She is proving to be extremely capable, taking new directions, in just a few weeks, towards a focus on a more consumer-centred experience. 

There is hope Asha Sharma will turn the Xbox’s business around, and, so far, she has delivered on many of the changes she wanted to make. In time, this could prove to be a huge step in the right direction, not just for Xbox, but for the whole gaming industry.