The new CEO for Microsoft Gaming, Asha Sharma will be helming the Xbox brand from now after the retirement of Phil Spencer, but according to Seamus Blackley, the founder of Xbox, the move may not bode well for the gaming platform in the long run. And in addition to weighing in on the company’s decision to make Sharma the new head of Xbox, the founder of the long running platform also said that she should leave the job today if she’s not genuinely passionate about videogames.
In an interview with GamesBeat, Blackley said that Microsoft’s move to bring in someone with a strong background on AI makes perfect sense given the massive push in the company for all things AI right now: “That’s not the same as Sega deciding how to gracefully go out of business. This is a company that’s trying to recontextualize the way we think about technology in its entirety. They’ve decided that the lever point that’s going to do that is generative AI models. They’re looking to fit everything into a generative AI model.”
He also suspects that perhaps Xbox is going to be ‘Sunsetted’ in the near future as the platform and what is stands for doesn’t really align with the current direction of Microsoft:
“They don’t say that, but that’s what’s happening. I expect that the new CEO, Asha Sharma, her job is going to be as a palliative care doctor who slides Xbox gently into the night.”
“Everything is a gen AI problem. Games, of course, are a gen AI problem. This is why I say this makes perfect sense. If you’re Satya, you have a hammer called gen AI and every single problem is a nail. Okay, so who do you put in charge of games? A games person? No, because in the world of Satya, everything is a gen AI problem, so you put a gen AI person in charge of games with a training model, with boot camps for her to train her like you train an AI model, to bring gen AI into a position to revolutionize games,” Blackley stated.
“I know that, again, Satya is holding a hammer and everything is a nail,” he said. “There’s a nail with an Xbox logo on it. He’s applying the AI person to it. He has to show shareholders and the press and the world that he is all in on this investment. He has to show them that he believes generative AI is going to fix games and make it profitable. He has to make this move. It doesn’t matter what you think about it. I don’t think he had any choice.”
Blackley also has some words of advice for the new CEO: “If I was talking to her I would say, look, if you’re not really passionate about games, or if you can’t develop a passion for games, then you should find a way to leave this job soon.”
Overall, everything he said do feel alarming given Microsoft’s push for AI which could very well slip over to gaming in more ways than one. And even though Sharma herself as stated previously that she believes only humans can write stories that can successfully resonate with other human players, what many are yet to understand or acknowledge that the same applies for gameplay too which is actually the heart of any videogame.
