Xbox CEO Asha Sharma Gives the Brand a Turbulent ‘Reset’

On Monday, Xbox CEO Asha Sharma announced a major restructuring of the brand, cutting about 3,200 roles over the current fiscal year as part of a “reset” of its gaming strategy. Sharma said the Xbox business is “not healthy” and that its margins lag far behind those of other platform and publishing businesses. She linked the decision to high costs, fewer consoles in use, and slower overall growth in Game Pass and multi-platform releases.

In the game development world, Sharma’s reset plan includes:

• Making the studios Compulsion Games and Double Fine Productions independent again, allowing them to keep their IP and catalogs.

• Ninja Theory and Undead Labs have “entered terms to join new ownership,” with funding and development hours focused on Senua and State of Decay 3.

• Mojang, creator of Minecraft, and King, creator of Candy Crush, will now report directly to Xbox leadership.

Sharma added that Xbox is also “making reductions across other units, and in some cases, shifting investment to focus on higher priority projects” involving Activision, Bethesda/ZeniMax, and Xbox Game Studios, among others. None of the brand’s first-party publicly announced games or projects will be canceled.

Editing the company’s management structure is expected to give remaining staff more responsibility, simplify its code and services, and reduce vendor spending by nearly half. Finally, Xbox is creating a chief operating officer (COO) role with end‑to‑end responsibility across content, hardware, platform and services, with Helen Chiang stepping up to the plate.

Through these changes, Sharma and her colleagues hope to return Xbox to a growth stage in 2027.