Microsoft insider Clippy spills details on big Xbox shakeup

Microsoft’s Xbox division has seen a rapid leadership change: Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer has retired and Sarah Bond has resigned as President of Xbox. Asha Sharma, Microsoft’s President of CoreAI, has stepped in to lead the Xbox brand as CEO. The moves have raised immediate questions about Xbox’s direction.

Sharma has said she won’t flood the Xbox ecosystem with “soulless AI slop,” even as Microsoft’s investments in generative AI and experiments like an AI-generated version of Quake suggest the company is exploring new paths for gaming. Signs of internal disruption have surfaced alongside the leadership shifts.

Accounts that Bond may not have sent a formal resignation email to the Xbox team have been taken as an indication of a messy transition, and there are concerns about morale and potential further departures. I sat down with Clippy, the paperclip helper who knows Microsoft’s ecosystem well, to make sense of the changes.

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