We have to be honest about where we are. We've got work to do.
When a platform loses the trust of its players, the path back rarely begins with spectacle — it begins with honesty. Asha Sharma, Xbox's new chief executive, has stepped into a role defined by accumulated frustration and chosen to name the problem plainly: the console has stagnated, the PC experience has faltered, and the work of repair must start now. Her pledge of biweekly updates throughout 2026 is less a product announcement than a philosophical reorientation — a signal that the measure of success will no longer be hardware sold, but players who choose to return.
- Years of platform neglect have left Xbox players feeling abandoned, with competitors pulling ahead while Microsoft's gaming identity grew diffuse and inward-facing.
- Sharma's candid internal admission — that players are frustrated and the fundamentals are broken — marks a rare moment of institutional self-reckoning from the top of a major tech brand.
- A biweekly update cadence for console and PC, a Game Pass price cut, an overhauled Achievements system, and the quiet burial of Copilot features signal that basics, not buzzwords, are now the priority.
- Leadership has been restructured to accelerate decision-making, with Xbox veterans and CoreAI talent brought in to close capability gaps that slowed the brand's ability to ship meaningful change.
- The horizon holds Project Helix — a PC-console hybrid due in 2027 — and unresolved questions about exclusivity, with the company weighing whether single-player titles stay exclusive while multiplayer games reach rival platforms.
Asha Sharma became Xbox's chief executive in February, inheriting a brand that had drifted — and she has wasted little time saying so out loud. In a company-wide meeting, she told staff directly that players feel neglected, that the console has gone too long without meaningful updates, and that Xbox's PC presence has remained weak and scattered. These were not new complaints, but hearing them acknowledged from the top represented a shift in tone.
Her answer is a commitment to biweekly updates for both console and PC throughout 2026, focused not on new features but on fixing what already exists — reducing friction, improving responsiveness, and getting players to fun faster. Alongside this cadence, she has already moved on several fronts: cutting the price of Game Pass, retiring the "Microsoft Gaming" umbrella brand, and improving the Achievements system. She ended development of Copilot features on console, a quiet signal that Xbox will not chase AI trends at the expense of basics.
Sharma has reorganized her leadership team around four pillars — hardware, content, experience, and services — and restructured decision-making to move faster and engage more directly with the community. She acknowledged that the organization had grown too inward-focused, too slow to ship impact.
The largest bet on the horizon is Project Helix, a PC-console hybrid system expected in 2027 that she has described as a genuine step forward rather than an incremental refresh. On exclusivity, she has been measured, suggesting that single-player titles may stay within the Xbox ecosystem while multiplayer games like Forza Horizon 6 could eventually reach PlayStation and Nintendo. The guiding metric going forward is daily active users — whether players actually come back — a measure that cuts through hardware sales figures to something more honest. The real verdict on whether these repairs hold will arrive with Project Helix.
Asha Sharma took over as Xbox's chief executive in February, stepping into a role vacated by Phil Spencer's retirement. Within months, she has begun articulating a vision for the brand that amounts to an admission: Xbox has lost its way, and the work to bring it back starts now.
In a company-wide meeting held a few weeks ago, Sharma was direct about the diagnosis. "We have to be honest about where we are," she told staff, according to sources who spoke with The Verge. "Players are frustrated with us. They feel like we haven't updated our console enough. They feel like our PC presence isn't very strong." These are not new complaints. For years, Xbox players have watched the platform stagnate relative to competitors, and the company's PC gaming efforts have remained scattered and underinvested. Sharma's acknowledgment of these failures signals a shift in tone from the leadership level.
Her response is to commit to a cadence of updates every two weeks for both console and PC platforms throughout 2026. The goal, she explained, is to "fix the fundamentals"—to sweat the details of the user experience and get players to fun faster and with less friction. This is not a promise of new games or flashy features. It is a promise to make the thing work better. She has also overseen recent moves that signal seriousness: a price cut to Xbox Game Pass, the dissolution of the "Microsoft Gaming" brand umbrella, and improvements to the Achievements system. She has restructured the leadership team, promoting veterans who built Xbox and bringing in talent from Microsoft's CoreAI division, while notably ending development of Copilot features on the console.
Sharma's broader strategy rests on four pillars: hardware, content, experience, and services. The hardware pillar hinges on Project Helix, an ambitious PC-console hybrid system expected to arrive in 2027. She has framed this not as an incremental upgrade but as "a big step forward" for both console and PC gaming, with improvements to performance and security baked in. The bet is that new hardware, combined with a restored software experience, can give players a reason to return to the ecosystem.
On the question of exclusivity—whether Xbox will keep first-party games exclusive or allow them to migrate to PlayStation and Nintendo platforms—Sharma has been cautious. She has indicated that the company will "make some calls" on this, but is still evaluating options. The implication, based on reporting, is that single-player titles may remain exclusive while multiplayer-driven games like Forza Horizon 6 could eventually reach other platforms. The underlying logic is pragmatic: draw players in, keep them playing, measure success by daily active users rather than hardware sales.
In a memo explaining the leadership changes, Sharma wrote that the organization had become too inward-focused, spending too much time on internal processes and not enough with the community. "Right now, it is too hard to ship impact quickly," she noted. The restructuring, she suggested, would accelerate decision-making and fill capability gaps that have hampered the brand. The end of Copilot development signals that generative AI will not be the focus—a reassurance to players worried that the company might chase trends instead of fixing basics.
What emerges from Sharma's statements is a leader who has inherited a brand in need of repair and is choosing to start with the unglamorous work: making the console faster, the PC experience more coherent, the software more responsive to what players actually want. Whether biweekly updates and a restructured leadership team can reverse years of drift remains to be seen. But the commitment to measure success by daily active users—by whether players come back—suggests a clarity of purpose that has been absent. The real test will come in 2027, when Project Helix arrives and players can judge whether the fundamentals have actually been restored.
Notable Quotes
Players are frustrated with us. They feel like we haven't updated our console enough, and they feel like our PC presence isn't very strong.— Asha Sharma, Xbox CEO
We have to fix the fundamentals on console and PC. We have to sweat every single detail and every single part of the experience to get to fun much faster and make it simpler.— Asha Sharma, Xbox CEO
The Hearth Conversation Another angle on the story
Why does Sharma keep talking about "fundamentals" instead of new games or exclusive content?
Because she's diagnosing a different problem. Players aren't leaving Xbox because there aren't enough games—they're leaving because the platform itself is frustrating to use. The console hasn't been updated meaningfully in years. The PC version is scattered. She's saying: let's make what we have actually work first.
But doesn't that sound like a defensive move? Like she's admitting defeat on the hardware front?
It's an admission, yes, but not a defeat. It's the opposite—it's saying we're not going to pretend Project Helix will fix everything. We're going to fix what we can control right now, every two weeks, so when new hardware arrives in 2027, players actually want to use it.
The leadership reshuffle—bringing in people from CoreAI and ending Copilot development. What's the real message there?
That AI is not the answer to Xbox's problems. The company was drifting toward chasing the generative AI trend. Sharma is saying: no. We need people who understand consumer products and can move fast. We need to ship things that matter to players, not experiments.
Daily active users as the north star—isn't that just a metric that favors live-service games?
It could be, but it doesn't have to be. It's really about retention. Can we make something so good that people want to come back? That applies to a single-player game just as much as a live service. It's a shift from "how many consoles did we sell" to "how many people actually play."
What about the exclusivity question? It sounds like she's leaving the door open for multiplatform releases.
She is. And that's a pragmatic move. If a multiplayer game like Forza Horizon can reach more players on PlayStation or Switch, that's more daily active users. But single-player experiences might stay exclusive because they're the draw—the reason to own an Xbox. It's not about ideology anymore. It's about where the players are.
Do you think this actually works? Can biweekly updates restore trust?
Trust is slow to rebuild. But consistency matters. If she delivers on this—if every two weeks there's a real improvement, not just a patch note—then yes, it starts to work. The hard part is sustaining it. One year of good updates is a start. Five years is a turnaround.