Asha Sharma has had a big job on her hands sorting out the mess left to her from the old guard at Xbox, and I think she’s doing a fine job of the clean-up so far.
If you’re purely looking at the negatives then you’re seeing a picture of struggles and suffering at Xbox. Thousands of layoffs with more supposedly set to come is the highlight of that, and by no means am I saying that’s a good thing.
It’s hard to spin these things in a positive light as you never want to see people losing their jobs, especially talented individuals that maybe didn’t get the recognition they deserve when working behind some of our favourite titles.
With that said, I think the unfortunate truth is that this was bound to happen due to the poor management and weak previous generation that came before Sharma took charge.
She’s had to make some tough decisions in her short 100-or-so days in charge so far but she’s also been making her mark.
Her appointment was questionable at the time, no less so because she had no prior experience in the professional gaming sphere. What got her the job over the expected success of Phil Spencer, Sarah Bond, was Sharma’s history and expertise in user acquisition.
And that’s the big point for me. Sure, knowledge of gaming would be ideal, but Xbox has been haemorrhaging subscribers and declining console sales is an indicator that things are bigger than a need to regain lost players.
The decisions she’s been making so far have been drastic but necessary to kill off the previous generation which was bringing Xbox down so that she can steer the ship back in the right direction.
Game Pass will survive
Game Pass has been a brilliant feature ever since it was introduced in my opinion, but I agree that it had taken a turn for the worse in the past couple of years.
The price hike was a big reason as to why I turned to purely PC gaming for a short while, opting to pause my Game Pass membership and only play games on Steam. I also bought a Switch 2 and began making that my primary console, since I need to always be stimulated.
However, I have since returned to Xbox when the price for the Ultimate membership went back down, and I imagine that was the same for a lot of players.
There is still work to be done to bring trust back to the service and to patch the issues that it was plagued with towards the end of Spencers time, but Sharma and her new system has been making good headway in fixing them already.
Making Bethesda move
Bethesda’s partial roadmap announcement the other day is another sign of the difference Sharma is making. When Xbox purchased ZeniMax Media, Bethesda’s parent company, in 2021, it felt exciting, like there was going to be a lot of good coming very soon.
Sure, in the 5 years since the acquisition we’ve gotten Starfield plus loads of content for both the Elder Scrolls Online and Fallout 76, but none of it is what we all have really been asking for.
Starfield was cool for a little while since it was a major project from them but it wasn’t the massive hit that they were hoping for.
As for ESO and Fallout 76, they’re both supposedly really solid games now – I used to play them but haven’t touched them in years, hence supposedly – but we don’t want continuations of their live service games. They feel like soulless money-grabs because that’s exactly what they are.
Elder Scrolls 6 was first teased 8 years ago now. Fallout 4 was released 11 years ago. We NEED new installments of both series and they NEED to come soon.
That’s why I like the note from Bethesda, not just because it reignites the belief that new games are going to be coming soon, but also because it feels like they’ve been giving the kick in the arse that they weren’t getting before.
Spencer seemed happy to buy the company and instruct them to keep rolling out content for the live services since it makes them money.
Sharma wants to develop Xbox and get them to be a leader in gaming. She’s identified that they exclusively own one of the biggest and most popular games studios and is utilising that by getting them to get back to work on what we really want to see.
I may be on my own with my thinking and call me a fool for having this much faith in Sharma, but from what I see and am making out, she’s taken on the responsibility and decided someone has to be bad guy to eventually help the company begin to flourish once again.
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