Phil Spencer’s replacement by an AI evangelist at Xbox has players fearing for the future of the company: ‘I don’t want to be a doomer, but this doesn’t look good’

Phil Spencer is officially exiting his role at Xbox after spending over a decade at the helm. He’s been with Microsoft for nearly 40 years, having joined as an intern all the way back in 1988. His replacement is a former president of one of Microsoft’s AI divisions, and though she staunchly denied AI’s involvement in the future of Microsoft Gaming, not everyone is convinced.

The new CEO of Xbox will be Asha Sharma, the recent president of Microsoft’s CoreAI division. She joined the company in 2024 and doesn’t really have much gaming background to speak of. What she does have is experience in leadership positions, having been a COO at Intercart and the president of Meta’s product and engineering department before eventually hopping into Microsoft’s AI side.

Phil Spencer was part of Xbox for 25 years, leading the company for over a decade. Image via Microsoft.

Sharma is a firm supporter of artificial intelligence and its real-world applications. In fact, she thinks AI solutions in medicine and healthcare could potentially reverse the effects of declining global fertility rates, saying in one podcast that AI solutions in the UK improved pregnancy rates while “cutting costs at the same time.” She also praised GPT-5 for its role in improving healthcare, as well as how AI is being used at Stanford to amplify tumor reviews.

To put it simply: Sharma is quite supportive of artificial intelligence solutions, but, for whatever reason, wants us to believe it’s out of the question at Xbox.

In an internal email shared with Microsoft staff amid her appointment as Xbox head, Sharma said the following: “As monetization and AI evolve and influence this future, we will not chase short-term efficiency or flood our ecosystem with soulless AI slop. Games are and always will be art, crafted by humans, and created with the most innovative technology provided by us.”

This bit, while encouraging, could be taken as a string of recognizable buzzwords strung together for immediate effect, rather than to reflect long-term strategies. I’m not the only one smelling a rat: most of the people responding to Sharma’s new position are having a hard time believing such a staunch AI supporter would declare the technology verboten at her new job.

“I don’t want to be a doomer, but this doesn’t look good,” one Reddit user wrote in response to Sharma’s prior tenure as Core AI president. “Having an AI exec in charge does not breed confidence,” said another. “Something’s really fucking terrifying to me about someone from AI taking over as head of the agency,” wrote another still.

The sentiments among gamers are very gloomy, with many thinking this could spell the end of Xbox as we know it.

Spencer’s tenure as Xbox president wasn’t the best, but his role in turning the tide for Xbox One, as well as in introducing the Game Pass service and multiplatformity as a default for publishers, will be remembered quite fondly. A lot of bad has happened in between, however, but I don’t think we’ve seen the worst of it yet.

Sharma could have been quite sincere in her email, and she does seem to want to engage with gaming in a different way, but her career doesn’t inspire hope that Xbox will once again become the beacon of the industry. AI, no matter what, is a fundamental stain on art.