Xbox Co-Founder Says New Microsoft Gaming CEO is ‘a Palliative Care Doctor’

Seamus Blackley, one of the co-founders of the original Xbox console, is worried that Xbox is now on its deathbed following last week’s major leadership change. In a recent interview with Gamesbeat, Blackley called Asha Sharma, Microsoft’s former president of Core AI replacing Phil Spencer at the head of Microsoft Gaming, as “a palliative care doctor who slides Xbox gently into the night.”

“Satya Nadella has made an incredible number of bets and invested an incredible amount of money and credibility in the transform model AI future. Xbox, like a lot of businesses that aren’t the core AI business, is being sunsetted. 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,” Blackley said.

In her internal memo to employees published on Friday, the new head of Microsoft Gaming expressed her disregard for “soulless AI slop” and intent to “protect what works”… even though many of Phil Spencer’s bets have alienated Xbox fans and made Xbox console sales fall off a cliff. “Games are and always will be art, crafted by humans, and created with the most innovative technology provided by us,” Sharma also said on Friday.

Well, according to Blackley, Sharma’s public commitment to make Xbox deliver great games made by humans and a console people care about will crash against the reality of a company seeing Xbox’s problems – or any business problem – as an AI problem. And again, this is the result of Microsoft investing so much into its AI infrastructure in recent years. As a reminder, we’re talking about $84.6 billion on AI in its fiscal 2025, then $72.4 billion in the first two quarters of fiscal 2026.

“Our old way of thinking about things doesn’t work here anymore because the mindset of the guys making the decisions has completely changed. They are living in a world where generative AI is the solution to the problems, and so the application of generative AI is the only solution that they need to think about. Once they’ve done that, the generative AI will then take over the problem,” Blackley said.

In Blackley’s eyes, Sharma, with her background in AI and lack of experience in the video games industry, was the obvious pick for the Microsoft Gaming CEO job. “It would have been shocking if they had somebody in there in a meaningful role who was passionate about games, passionate about the creator-driven business of games, because it would be in direct conflict with everything else Microsoft is doing,” Blackley said.

Despite his pessimism about the future of Xbox, Blackley still had two pieces of advice for the new head of Microsoft Gaming: The first one is to quit if she “can’t develop a passion for games,” adding that “there’s a long history of extremely smart people in games who have hit this wall.” Moreover, Blackley invited Sharma to go talk to video games industry veterans to learn from them and do other actions to “gain the trust of the community.”

All in all, Sharma just started her new role, and it’s not exactly fair to make so many assumptions about what she’s going to do as the new head of Microsoft Gaming. The video games industry has changed a lot since the original Xbox console launched almost 25 years ago, and Sharma said that she wanted to “return to the renegade spirit that built Xbox in the first place.” Mike Ybarra, the former President of Blizzard who was often critical of Xbox’s recent strategy choices, had a more positive outlook on Sharma. “Fresh eyes on the opportunities is never a bad thing,” he tweeted on Friday.