New Microsoft gaming chief has “no tolerance for bad AI”

A gaming education

Unlike Spencer, who spent years at Microsoft Game Studios before heading Microsoft’s gaming division, Sharma has no professional experience in the video game industry. And her personal experience with Xbox also seems somewhat limited; after sharing her Gamertag on social media over the weekend, curious gamers found that her Xbox play history dates back roughly one month. That’s also in stark contrast to Spencer, who has amassed a score of over 121,000 across decades of play.

In her interview with Variety, Sharma cited 2016’s Firewatch as an example of the kinds of games with “deep emotional resonance” and “a distinct point of view” that she’s looking for from Microsoft. And on social media, Sharma shared her list of the three greatest games ever: “Halo, Valheim, Goldeneye,” for what it’s worth. Sharma also seems to be taking recommendations for games to catch up on; after saying on social media that she would try Borderlands 2, the game appeared in her recently played games over the weekend.

A look at some of Sharma’s recently played Xbox games, as of this writing.

Being a personal fan of video games isn’t necessarily required to succeed in running a gaming company. Nintendo President Hiroshi Yamauchi famously didn’t care for video games even as he launched the Famicom and Nintendo Entertainment System to worldwide success in the 1980s. Still, the lack of direct experience with the gaming world marks a sharp change after Spencer’s long tenure at a time when Microsoft is struggling to redefine the Xbox brand amid cratering hardware sales, a pivot away from software exclusives, and a move to extend the Xbox brand to many different devices.

Xbox President and COO Sarah Bond, who by all accounts was being set up to succeed Spencer, also announced her departure from Microsoft on Friday, ending a nearly nine-year stint as a public face for the company’s gaming efforts. The Verge reports that Bond caused a lot of friction within the Xbox team when she championed the “Xbox Everywhere” strategy and “This is an Xbox” marketing campaign, which focused on streaming Xbox games to hardware like mobile phones and tablets, according to anonymous sources. Shortly before the launch of that campaign in 2024, Microsoft lost marketing executives Jerrett West and Kareem Choudry, leading to significant internal reorganization.

Longtime Xbox Game Studios executive Matt Booty, whose history in the game industry dates back to working for Williams Electronics in the ’90s, has been promoted to executive vice president and chief content officer for Xbox and “will continue working closely with [Sharma] to ensure a smooth transition,” Microsoft said in its announcement Friday.