Former Xbox leadership Phil Spencer, whom Sharma was succeeding, was a prolific collector of achievements with a rich gamercard that was a popular subject of discussion among Xbox communities.
Scrolling to the bottom, Sharma’s very first achievement was unlocked in The Master Chief Collection and was the aptly titled “Your Journey Begins” on January 15 of this year
SYAC
If anything this proves that the correlation between active gamer and competent gaming CEO might not be that strong with how awesome Xbox is currently.
I think being an active gamer is an important quality but it certainly doesn’t guarantee success. Certainly having never played an XBOX before in your life is a BAD BAD quality for XBOX leadership.
It’s hard to do much worse than Spencer but I’m sure she’ll manage.
If you’re offered the job, take it I guess because no one expects you to succeed. If the internal expectations are to focus on the following: Minecraft, CoD, Diablo, WoW, Overwatch, Candy Crush, then maybe this person will excel in that direction. Also all those being video games that found success before Microsoft
Actually trying to make Xbox a success, it’s been nearly 13 years of trying to course correct and probably a good amount north of 100 billion dollars and still no strong consistent lineup of new releases. Fable can knock it out the park but that would just be one single player AAA game hit for Xbox after 13 years. So I imagine her expectations are going to be in managing what’s proven profitable and winding down what’s been proven to be outside of what they’re good at
On the one hand I see the reason for criticism, when a person that apparently never touched a video game becomes a XBOX CEO, on the other hand does her account really read like a real one, and I think this is great. I think there is nothing easier for an Xbox CEO than to have a fake account created going back 20 years and showing thousands of hours of gaming or have somebody game for you Elon Musk style.
This reads like someone that is actually preparing for the new role she has to fill and making her own gaming experiences and listening to community feedback.
Is it as good as having someone as CEO with a long history in gaming? Probably not. But I think this might be the next best thing.
“She has zero experience but at least she’s not lying, I guess?”
Yeah I don’t get what you’re trying to say here at all.
Red flag is that it is an AI person hired for a game division who can’t even be trusted if any of their statements were generated through copilot, and they are nothing but a physical placeholder to mouth off copilot commands.
And this hiring coming from the company that has decided shoving copilot into as many different Microsoft products like notepad is the way forward. So a game account is nothing but meaningless fluff when even boomers play games on their phones. Playing games doesn’t show any signs of qualifications that indicate consumers will be better off.
Just more moves towards trying to shove AI integration to draw in investors.
Ah, the funeral director has arrived!
A nongamer leading a console/studio company… More corporate trash coming our way.
It’s a month old account.
But the biggest redflag is she’s never worked for a gaming company before, she went from AI exec to Xbox CEO…
She literally has no idea how any of it works
This is the fundamental problem in the game industry. It became so profitable over the years it attracted the worst kind of people to lead creative endeavors.
Of course I‘m talking about scum from the finance world and big tech that we‘ve all grown to despise over the years. They don‘t know the consumer or the product. They‘re in it for the money and we can see that in mass layoffs, predatory monetization practices that make other entertainment industries blush and insanely bloated budgets for projects with no vision.
They‘re disgusting parasites. They‘re killing games and that‘s why I play so much more indie and retro games than AAA.
This is a fundamental problem with all industries. Management rarely has any idea what their industry is about and are just there to make numbers go up no matter what by pushing buttons/people.
Oh she’ll be prefect then! She will spend a minimum amount of time pretending like she’s a gamer to relate to the gaming scene and then because she knows it all, base all her decisions on her profound knowledge!
/s
I’d be a better fit for the role. I’ve never played XBox, but neither has she, and I’ve been a gamer since 1985.
I’d LOVE to get in there, and do something with Rare.
Doesn’t matter for the role.
You’re right, my experience as a sous chef does make me a perfect fit for that chief of surgery job I saw advertised. Imma go for it.
Business experience for a business role.
To be fair, my Xbox gamer tag is pretty lacking as I’m mainly a pcgamer and retro gamer. So hopefully that is the case with her.
But to be honest, from my perspective, Xbox is already lower on the scale to me that it can get worse in any measurable way.
I’m not a fan of a company having a CEO with no clue about their product either. But how much worse than Spencer can she really be? Maybe he should have focused more on his job than his gamer reputation.
Phil Spencer merely did what his higher ups told him to do, she will do the exact same except caring less about video games.
So you agree with me that she won’t do a worse job?
Wow she made her first MCC achievement on january 15 of this year. Wtf? 18 hours in Infinite. I have like 200 and i despite this game. How can one be the CEO of a gaming division, when your not a gamer? Every news from Xbox is just evolving from bad to worse.
How can one be the CEO of a gaming division
By all respect, a CEO does not need to be a gamer. Also 18 hours versus your 200… Maybe she does not have the same time as you to play? I honestly don’t know why people think that a CEO have to be this junky like us and play all day long.
Given that Elon Musk is supposed to be in charge of like 6 different companies at once and still manages to find the time to shitpost on Twitter all day, a CEO’s time can’t be that busy.
Taking 2 minutes to post 2 sentences is not the same as playing a game for 200 hours.
