New Xbox CEO Asha Sharma Makes Leadership Changes - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 05 May 2026 / 4,225 Views
In February of this year Xbox boss Phil Spencer retired and Xbox President Sarah Bond resigned. Asha Sharma was brought on as the new head of Xbox, while Matt Booty was promoted to Chief Content Officer.
Sharma in a memo sent to Xbox employees seen by The Verge has announced several changes in leadership roles at Xbox.
Jason Ronald, vice president of next gen, is getting a promotion as Sharma stated, "On hardware, we are elevating Jason Ronald, accountable for Project Helix, and our platform." Jason Beaumont will also now "lead the product and serve as interim head of engineering."
Jared Palmer, who previously worked with Sharma in Microsoft's CoreAI division, is joining Xbox as the VP of engineering and a technical advisor to Sharma. Palmer will work "directly with me on our most complex product and engineering problems, with a focus on developer tooling, taste, and infrastructure."
Tim Allen, the former Microsoft CoreAI VP of design and GitHub’s senior VP of design and research, is joining Xbox to lead design. Sharma says this is the "first time bringing together product design, design engineering, research, and creative with a fan-first focus."
Jonathan McKay, the former head of growth at Microsoft’s CoreAI division, is also joining the teram at Xbox to lead growth, data platform, and analytics.Evan Chaki, the former general manager in CoreAI, is joining a new team at Xbox that will "lead a forward-deployed engineering group focused on removing repetitive work, simplifying development, and improving how we operate."
As far as people leaving Xbox, Roanne Sones, the corporate vice president of Xbox devices and ecosystem, will be "taking a leave of absence after this summer and will be staying on as an advisor." Sones used to report to Bond and worked on launching the ROG Xbox Ally PC handhelds.
Kevin Gammill, the corporate vice president of Xbox user experience, has decided to leave Microsoft. "He has dedicated more than 15 years to Xbox and will support the transition," said Sharma. "I’m grateful for his leadership and everything he has built here."
"This is an important time for Xbox," said Sharma. "Our goal with this change is simple: build a platform that is affordable, personal, and open by staying close to the work and the people we serve. We will continue to add the capabilities needed to get there."
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can follow the author on Bluesky.
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I would honestly love to see a return to timed exclusives. If they are not going to have sole exclusivity, they can at least make their own platform be the primary for a year. Maybe longer depending on the title. They need to create the reason for people to come back to XB and it starts with a good steady stream of quality games.
If you mean their older library then sure but the new games are different. Halo is day and date on PS5, so is Fable and FH6 is only timed because it's taking longer to port but Turn 10 is working on it so it shouldn't be too long, Gears E-day is likely day and date with PS5 as well.
That doesn't change the fact that, up until this point, they have doing timed exclusivity only, so how can we "go back" to do something that is exactly what we've been doing?
That's what I mean by older catalog. If the directive was to move to multi-plat late in the gen like it was, of course some games are timed because they already were released earlier in the gen (Starfield).
When specific games weren't released when the directive came down and allowed more dev time then day and date was possible. Such as Gears Reloaded, Outer Worlds 2, Ninja Gaiden which MS published and funded, Doom. So no, they weren't always doing timed exclusives. When dev time allows they did do some day 1 releases which also leads into my previous point going forward with Fable etc.
That's why earlier this year, Craig Duncan stated PS5 releases would be more consistent going forward with more day and date games possible. You can try and knit pick all you want. But the last few years has been a mix of both day and date releases and timed, not just timed. The release dates themselves prove that so you're just wasting words at this point.
Dude, that's just a couple ganes..
And a couple of games is all it takes to prove that you're wrong..
I swear Ive never seen team emails leak to the media more than Xbox.
Seeing this many people coming from CoreAI, seems like she was not joking when she said that they are taking a "data-driven" approach. And you know what?;that might be a good thing. Phil and Sarah were running things based on vibes and feelings and look what happened.
So you'd rather they moved towards an approach that lays off even more employees, wastes water, and furthers the technology that's been used in war crimes in Iran? Good to see you have your priorities straight.
Shi literally got rid of Copilot Ai for Xbox and mobile...
But she's an AI boss.
I still trust her. Once a shill for Skynet, always a shill for Skynet.
As long as they push towards HUMAN EMPLOYEES I'm happy.
not going to happen, have you seen their recent buyout offers?
No, and I really don't need the likes of you killing what little hope I have left for the future.
best stay out of the news
What are the chances they are making their own AI upscaling tech?
Yet another task given to AI that could've easily been done BY HUMANS.
I'm pretty sure AI upscaling in this context means real-time upscaling, akin to DLSS. I'm not sure how you're going to have humans upscale 30 to 60 frames per second for a lot of players.
Akin to DLS5, meaning it will look like shit?
How ìs it even possible to be this clueless about AI upscaling while being this willing to discuss it?
Don't need to get personal.
Don't need to get involved in matters you don't seem to know anything about.
Don't need to keep flaming.
