Amid the official statements and many tweets that followed one of the biggest shakeups ever at Xbox, one of its creators believes Microsoft’s true plan is to bring its gaming business to an end.
Seamus Blackley co-created Xbox at Microsoft, bringing to life Microsoft’s console hardware in 2001 before leaving just a year later. He has watched his former company hit the headlines as Phil Spencer and would-be successor Sarah Bond announced their exit. And in a new interview, he revealed what he believes to be new Xbox CEO Asha Sharma's actual mission — which sounds like nothing good for Xbox fans.
Speaking to GamesBeat, Blackley said that Xbox is not a core part of Microsoft’s all-encompassing AI push, and so “is being sunsetted.” Drafting in Sharma, who Blackley points out came from Microsoft’s AI team with no gaming background, is further evidence of the company’s true strategy, he claimed. “They don’t say that, but that’s what’s happening,” he went on. “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.”
Part of the problem here, according to Blackley, is that Microsoft head honcho Satya Nadella believes that AI will “subsume” games “like it will subsume everything,” and that spells the end for the traditional video games business, much of which Microsoft owns.
“The job of all these people is to just gently usher all of these business units into the new world of AI,” Blackley said. “That’s what you’re seeing here. Whether or not you agree with it, whether you agree with AI having the potential to do that, whether AI will be successful, is a separate matter. But that’s what we’re seeing. That is in no way surprising. It would have been shocking if they had somebody in there in a meaningful role who was passionate about games, passionate about the creator-driven business of games, because it would be in direct conflict with everything else Microsoft is doing. Microsoft is a company that is now about enabling its customers by enabling AI to drive things. That’s at odds with the auteur model of any art, but specifically of games. Microsoft doesn’t have the problem that Apple does, or that Netflix does, where they have an auteur-driven content model to manage. Games are the only place where they have a content business.”
It’s worth pointing out that Blackley's comments go against the statements released by Microsoft in its announcement of the Xbox shakeup. Sharma has promised to deliver “the return of Xbox,” and, as part of that, has vowed to reengage with core Xbox fans. There was even a promise to commit to console, which is certainly a crowd-pleasing comment at a time when so many Xbox fans feel disenfranchised with Microsoft’s shifting strategy. As for Satya Nadella, he has said he was “long on gaming and its role at the center of our consumer ambition,” which doesn’t sound like Xbox is sunsetting any time soon.
As it stands, Microsoft has a long list of video games due out this year and beyond, and the promise of a new Xbox console in the coming years. One of the big questions around recent events is whether Sharma will tear up those plans. Of course, the likes of Fable and Halo and Call of Duty will release this year, as announced. But will the next-gen Xbox fall by the wayside? Will any plans former Xbox boss Phil Spencer had for an Xbox handheld come to fruition?
And while Sharma has said she has "no tolerance for bad AI," and promised to "not chase short-term efficiency or flood our ecosystem with soulless AI slop," it seems unlikely that gaming will escape Microsoft's big AI push entirely.
IGN has much more on Sharma's arrival and the departure of Spencer, including the many farewells to him from veteran developers, Spencer's personal words to the Xbox community following his departure, and Sharma's own responses to initial concerns around her recent AI work and lack of gaming industry job experience.
Photo by David McNew/Getty Images.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
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