Xbox is bringing in a new leadership team drawn largely from Microsoft $MSFT's CoreAI engineering division, according to CNBC, as the gaming unit's new CEO moves to reverse a stretch of declining revenue.
Four of the incoming leaders come from Microsoft's CoreAI group, while 2 veterans with 24 years each at the company are exiting
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Xbox is bringing in a new leadership team drawn largely from Microsoft $MSFT's CoreAI engineering division, according to CNBC, as the gaming unit's new CEO moves to reverse a stretch of declining revenue.
Addressing staff in a memo, Microsoft’s new Xbox CEO, Asha Sharma, laid out a frank diagnosis of the unit's shortcomings. She wrote that the organization moves too slowly when launching products, has devoted excessive energy to internal matters at the expense of connecting with players, and lacks sufficient depth in certain core areas — problems she said require a fundamental rethinking of how Xbox is structured and run.
Four of the incoming executives come from CoreAI, the Microsoft group where Sharma worked before moving to Xbox in February following the retirement of longtime gaming chief Phil Spencer. Joining Xbox to cover product strategy, engineering, developer tools, and infrastructure is Jared Palmer, who most recently served as a vice president within the CoreAI group and also held a senior vice president role at Microsoft's GitHub subsidiary. Design responsibilities at Xbox will fall to Tim Allen, a CoreAI and GitHub design executive who spent close to four years heading design and research at Instacart before joining Microsoft last November. The head of growth position at Xbox goes to Jonathan McKay, whose resume includes a director-level role at Meta $META and leading growth efforts for ChatGPT at OpenAI before he moved into the equivalent CoreAI position at Microsoft. Rounding out the CoreAI contingent, Evan Chaki will oversee a group of forward-deployed engineers tasked with cutting through redundant workflows and making the development process less cumbersome.
Xbox's subscription and cloud operations will be handed to David Schloss, the one incoming executive without a Microsoft background, who comes from Instacart where he served as senior director of product and growth.
Among those exiting is Kevin Gammill, who oversaw Xbox user experience and game development and publishing platforms as a corporate vice president. Corporate vice president Roanne Sones, responsible for Xbox devices and ecosystem, plans to step away on leave following this summer and eventually shift into an advisory capacity. The two departures mark the end of remarkably long tenures — each had been with Microsoft for 24 years.
Before becoming Xbox CEO in February, Sharma started her Microsoft career in 2024 and previously held senior roles at Meta and Instacart. The leadership changes come as gaming revenue has dropped in four of the last six quarters. Nadella has said the company needs to win back users for products like Xbox and Bing. In April, Sharma lowered prices for Game Pass, the subscription service that gives access to hundreds of games.
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