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Xbox Co-founder Says Microsoft is Quietly Sunsetting the Platform (gamesbeat.com) 46

Posted by msmash from the palliative-care-for-consoles dept.
Seamus Blackley, one of the original founders of Xbox who helped convince Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer to back a console project more than 26 years ago, told GamesBeat in an interview that he believes Microsoft is quietly sunsetting the platform under the guise of an AI-driven leadership transition.

Microsoft recently announced that Asha Sharma, whose career has focused on AI and software as a service, will replace Phil Spencer as Xbox CEO, and that COO and president Sarah Bond is leaving the company. Blackley said he expects Sharma's role to be that of "a palliative care doctor who slides Xbox gently into the night," arguing that Satya Nadella's all-consuming bet on generative AI has turned every business unit -- Xbox included -- into a nail for the same hammer.

He compared the appointment to putting someone who doesn't like movies in charge of a major motion picture studio, and advised Sharma to either develop a genuine passion for games or find a way to leave the job soon.
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Xbox Co-founder Says Microsoft is Quietly Sunsetting the Platform

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  • the writings on the wall

    • the writings on the wall

      Well... in the cloud anyway.

      Asha Sharma, whose career has focused on AI and software as a service, will replace Phil Spencer as Xbox CEO,

  • Quietly? (Score:3)

    by ffkom ( 3519199 ) on Wednesday February 25, 2026 @04:16PM (#66010126)
    Microslop has been pretty loud about their forfeit of Xbox, ever since that legendary "4 games only" interview, and absolutely clear with their marketing campaign that everything is an Xbox. One really had to close one's eyes and plug one's ears to not see the Xbox fade away since back then.

  • ...the new Spinal Tap movie where the record company guy is physically unable to enjoy music
    "putting someone who doesn't like movies in charge of a major motion picture studio"

  • MS wants to be android, not iPhone (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Somervillain ( 4719341 ) on Wednesday February 25, 2026 @04:29PM (#66010146)
    I think MS wants XBox to be android...a diverse platform in which they bear less responsibility for it's fortunes. The ASUS partnerships are a great example and potentially interesting. MS can never please everyone. But partners can inject new life. Why force everyone to your hardware when you can collect rent from Windows or SteamBox devices?

    Apple is about a walled garden. It's weird...you can force me to the Apple Way for productivity and I don't mind. I'll use Apple apps and apple hardware because Apple stuff works and if I can swallow the cost, things are fine. They generally work good enough and I don't have to think much. But gaming? fuck you...I want my games...when I want them...how I want them. I guess because gaming is optional. I need a phone, I don't need an XBox. I can get by with tablet games or PC games, etc.

    I love my XBox. I probably should have gotten a PS5 but hey, the past is the past. I am actually excited to see XBox as a platform. I am excited to see Valve or ASUS release hardware faster than MS.

    I'd love for the next XBox to be an OS I can install on my own hardware and get the same experience. The ROG XBox Ally was exciting...a great idea...SHIT implementation, but that was entirely windows fault. Fix that?...and XBox gets exciting again. Windows becomes a nice OS for gaming instead of something we put up with just because. If Roku can do this, why can't MS?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by GoTeam ( 5042081 )

      If Roku can do this, why can't MS?

      Microsoft has over 200,000 employees and Roku has less than 4,000. For Microsoft gaming specific employees, the number drops to 22,000 ish. If I have a point at all, it's that it's harder for a large company to make changes than for a small one to do the same.

      • If nothing else, it's a true point that is often relevant and worth keeping in mind.

        Though I don't like the changes Roku has been making, since they all involve running ads on hardware I paid for and didn't have ads when I did.

      • 100% this! If I had mod points, you'd get them!

        Most of my time at a large corporation was spent dealing with the bureaucracy to get something small done ... Something that should only take about 5-10 minutes of my time would be spent chasing down "the right person" to get me "access" or to "authorize" my request to do something that was only ever internal, even if it was a task from the CTO himself :|

        I'll never forget: I made a small static web page that ingested some JSON from our internal DB in order

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by MobyDisk ( 75490 )

      Microsoft has tried this open approach many times, but they seem to always fail: Windows Phone, Zune / PlaysForSure, Media Center, Windows Tablet, Microsoft Surface, Windows Mixed Reality. Over the last 20 years people seem to prefer the walled garden over the open platform.

      Who wants to speculate why?

      • Of this list, I'd say that Surface wasn't meant to be Microsoft competing w/ the likes of Dell, HP, Acer, Lenovo, et al. It was supposed to be a reference platform for them on how they could make computers that are competitive w/ Macs. Particularly the ones based on the M-series. It also explains why they're not competitively priced

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by edwdig ( 47888 )

      I'd love for the next XBox to be an OS I can install on my own hardware and get the same experience. The ROG XBox Ally was exciting...a great idea...SHIT implementation, but that was entirely windows fault. Fix that?...and XBox gets exciting again. Windows becomes a nice OS for gaming instead of something we put up with just because.

      All of that boils down to PCs are an open platform with an infinite number of possible hardware combinations, but the Xbox is a fixed implementation with only a few variations.

      The Xbox has always been a Windows box running DirectX. You just have standard hardware and a different UI, and the user can't muck with the OS.

      • The Xbox has always been a Windows box running DirectX. You just have standard hardware and a different UI, and the user can't muck with the OS.

        If you've used both, you know this is far from correct. Windows machines have sloppy update procedures that sometimes work and sometimes fail. Bluetooth sometimes works, sometimes fails. XBox?...works great. It's smooth and does what you need it to. When I press that XBox button on the controller, the console reliably turns on. It reliably updates itself. It has never crashed on me in 5 years, but if it were to, I am very confident I can simply turn it off and on again and continue playing. I am con

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Microsoft has been trying to build one of those for decades. XBOX, Zune, Windows app store, Windows Phone.

      It's kind of ridiculous how hard they are trying to enshittify their products, and yet Windows is still by far the dominant OS.

      • It's kind of ridiculous how hard they are trying to enshittify their products, and yet Windows is still by far the dominant OS.

        It's not really ridiculous. My mom isn't going to pay 2x as much for her laptop to get a mac and she can't buy a Linux laptop at her local CostCo or Best Buy. They have the casual/budget market locked down as well as gamers.

        Apple has no real gaming ecosystem, so everyone who enjoys PC gaming needs a PC in the house. How many really want a Windows desktop for Baldur's Gate, Arc Raiders, or whatever + a macbook for general usage? How many on a limited budget are going to pay Macbook prices for somethin

  • I haven't really had any cool XBox exclusive titles to play on my XBox lately, so it's just collecting dust.

    If the new CEO wants to turn the platform into an AI chatbot for doing Instacart orders, more power to her! At least my wife will get some use out of this dying platform.

    • Have you tried saying, "Hey, we'd get better groceries and pay less if you started going to the supermarket again"?

      It's true, the instacart people don't look at what they put in the cart, they just grab the worst pack of bacon, and you pay less. But my wife was... less than enthusiastic about the idea.

  • 100% a businessperson with a non-existent track record that fails upwards due to people pleasing, expect a lot of no decisions going forward

    • Yeah, she was previously a COO at Instacart, which is an online grocery delivery service. How on earth did she even end up in Microsoft, let alone become the head of one of its divisions?

      • Maybe she's a cousin to someone very high up at Microslop?

      • Yeah, she was previously a COO at Instacart, which is an online grocery delivery service. How on earth did she even end up in Microsoft, let alone become the head of one of its divisions?

        Because nobody at the C-suite level actually does anything.

        The only real qualification is "won't leak the secret that they don't do anything". Outsiders are risky. Mostly they just slide existing execs between C-suiteheart deals, slowly refilling the supply from the bottom up, in low-visibility positions. It doesn't matter if she knows anything about what Microsoft does, just like it doesn't matter if she worked somewhere that failed.

  • since they actually care about multi platform gaming

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by ffkom ( 3519199 )
      What should Steam do with "Xbox"? They already have a better operating system, a larger number of games, the only thing they do not have is console hardware and physical media. But Microsoft opted to not develop any competition to the PS5 Pro, the remaining few Xbox Series X are ridiculously overpriced, and Steam never wanted to allow people to use physical media - so there really would not be much sense for Steam to buy the remaining "Xbox"-branding shell. And "game pass", from my point of view, is just a

      • They will soon have console hardware too (Steam Machine), though the current silliness with component pricing and availability is going to disrupt their launch. They already have handheld hardware.

  • The OG Xbox was amazing and had incredible value when modded. I still have a few running today.

    Always enjoyed the ecosystem over the PS too.

  • Ex executive likes to hear himself talk (Score:3)

    by locater16 ( 2326718 ) on Wednesday February 25, 2026 @05:50PM (#66010312)
    also likes when other people hear him talk. Local psychologists concerned he may have untreated narcissism but can't stand listening to him long enough to find out.
  • and set-top boxes are a dime a dozen.

    It's not that xbox was bad. And some aspects of it were pretty powerful and advanced. Remember kinect? Cutting edge stuff at the time.

    But, Sony was just better. Microsoft tried. Not their strength. No dishonor in admitting defeat and redirecting the resources elsewhere.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ffkom ( 3519199 )

      It's not that xbox was bad. And some aspects of it were pretty powerful and advanced. Remember kinect? Cutting edge stuff at the time.

      "Kinect" may have been a "cutting edge" device for its time, but it was also an early nail into the Xbox coffin. Had they sold "Kinect" as an optional add-on, no harm had been done, but making the Xbox 100 USD more expensive by forcing the "Kinect" upon every buyer was just totally stupid, as was the "always online" idea and the presentation of the Xbox one as a generic media platform. There is a good video on this part of history at https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

    • where would that be people are seeing the same with windows and are starting to flee.
    • dunno about that i have not bought any console sense the 360/ps3. if a true hit its coming to pc at some point. game company's have finely hit the point where gamer are rejecting them in mass. nobody is paying 80$ for game that will still have tons of dlc or paying them just to use the systems online multiplayer

  • Windows (Score:3)

    by SlashbotAgent ( 6477336 ) on Wednesday February 25, 2026 @06:25PM (#66010390)

    Does this mean that the XBox apps default installed on Windows will be removed? Yay!

  • Hold my beer and watch this.

  • Nice euphemism...sunsetting, next corporate layoff Microsoft's vaunted PR spin machine will state "Sunsetting workers."

    --JoshK.

  • If they ever where in the "attention economy" in the first place. Sounds like a girl who doesn't play games, let alone understand boys, masturbation is simply not possible whilst playing a game unless you are lucky enough to have some help. It's generally a before or after activity entirely unrelated to games accept ones featuring Lara Croft perhaps.

    I assume MS still will publish games, you'll just stream them instead? I don't know the tech, does latency play a role in streaming for e-sports?. And the rest

  • i mean that's not good news for Windoze either, they're rapidly making it so it's only safe to run sandboxed anyway, at least if you value the contents of your hard drive... bad enough I gotta babysit the shutdown process to make sure it happens.

    It might force an interesting supreme court decision, though. What happens when a company with a monopoly suddenly SQUIRRELs over a new shiny thing, changes their product and services against the outcry of their userbase, and - ... hmm, described this way, it kind

  • While the silicon valley cult of founder fetishization is stupid, this guy didn't 'found' shit. He was the first appointed head of a division at a large corporation.

  • kinda sounds like they're sunsetting windows too... ever hear of a new product, microsoft? i don't want your ai to delete my hard drive

  • Can they spin out Zenimax and Activision/Blizzard before the fatal dose?

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