Xbox CEO Asha Sharma says all apps should be AI as original co-founder predicts company’s ‘end’

The incoming CEO of Xbox, Asha Sharma, has sparked controversy with her recent comments regarding the continued use of AI within the company.

After almost 30 years working with Microsoft, Phil Spencer announced his retirement as CEO of Xbox last week. Replacing him is Asha Sharma, who was previously the President of CoreAI. Many Xbox users have been very critical of Asha because of her previous experience with AI. There’s been an ongoing debate about the use of AI in the games industry, and for many, this is a sign that Microsoft is taking Xbox the wrong way.

New Xbox CEO says every application will become an AI application. pic.twitter.com/Ta9xGRpCaH

— THE RED DRAGON (@TheRedDragon) February 23, 2026

“I think that we just need to imagine the world as every application becoming an AI application, I think in a much bigger scale than what we had before,” Asha said in a clip shared across social media.

In an interview with Gamesbeat, original Xbox co-founder Seamus Blackley shared his thoughts on the new era of Xbox under Asha. He talked about the direction Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft, is taking the company.

“Satya Nadella has made an incredible number of bets and invested an incredible amount of money and credibility in the transform model AI future,” Seamus said. “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.”

He continued: “It just seems really true, I imagine asking somebody if it made sense to put a major motion picture studio into the hands of somebody who didn’t like movies, or a major record label into the hands of somebody who’d never seen a live show. Why would you do that? Well, you only do that if you’re looking at the problem in a more abstract way.”

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too many people will be mad the new xbox CEO is a woman and none of these people will be mad about what really matters is that she’s an ai maniac https://t.co/uerOkERWA8

— onion person (@CantEverDie) February 21, 2026

Just like the rest of Xbox users, Seamus is sceptical of continued use of AI in gaming.

“The natural consequence of the focus on AI is that AI abstracts every problem from the minds of the executives who believe in it. We’re abstracting the problem of games as well. There’s a core belief, and you can see it in what Satya said, that AI will subsume games like it will subsume everything.”

But don’t worry, Asha promised in an interview with Variety that AI slop won’t replace the beautiful games art we all love.

“As monetisation and AI evolve and influence this future, we will not chase short-term efficiency or flood our ecosystem with soulless AI slop,” she said. “Games are and always will be art, crafted by humans, and created with the most innovative technology provided by us.”

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Featured image via X/Canva