The Xbox brand is facing another big change as both Phil Spencer, CEO of Xbox, and Sarah Bond, President of Xbox, are leaving the company.
IGN broke the story, citing unnamed sources. Phil Spencer, who has been with Microsoft since 1988 and Xbox since 2001, has chosen to retire on February 23.
Sarah Bond was expected to take the role, but is apparently resigning from the company. He has been with Xbox for 9 years, assuming the role of President of Xbox in October 2023.
IGN obtained internal emails in which Microsoft head honcho Satya Nadella thanked Spencer for his time at Xbox.
Asha Sharma, currently the President of Microsoft’s CoreAI product., will take over Spencer’s role as the ultimate boss of Xbox. Meanwhile, Xbox Game Studios head Matt Booty is being promoted to Chief Content Officer, a brand new role at the company.
Interestingly, no new Xbox President has been mentioned. It is not clear who will participate, or if it is withdrawn.
According to Emails IGN, Spencer told the staff, “Last fall, I shared with Satya that I was thinking about stepping back and starting the next chapter of my life.”
“Today marks an exciting new chapter for Microsoft Gaming as Asha Sharma steps into the role of CEO, and I want to be the first to welcome her to this amazing team,” Spencer told the Xbox division. “Working with him over the past few months has given me a lot of confidence. He brings genuine curiosity, clarity and a deep commitment to understanding the players, creators, and decisions that shape our future.”
Spencer also says he will remain in an advisory role through the summer.
As for Sharma, he is focused on the three biggest recruits, saying he will focus on “the big games. Everything starts here. We have to have good games that the players like before we do anything.”
His second employer is “Xbox recovery”.
“We will celebrate our roots with a renewed commitment to Xbox starting with the console that shaped who we are,” Sharma said. “It connects us with the players and fans who invest in Xbox, and the developers who create meaningful experiences with it.”
The third is “the future of play.”
“To meet this time, we will create new business models and new ways to play based on what we already have: iconic teams, characters, and a world that people love,” Sharma told Xbox employees in his email. “But we won’t treat those worlds as static IP to milk and make money. We’ll build a shared platform and tools that empower developers and players to create and share their stories.”
Phil Spencer’s departure is a major change for the brand during a time of already major changes. He took over Xbox in 2014, shortly after the launch of the Xbox One which left gamers with a sour taste in their mouths. Under his leadership, he brought the Xbox back to gamers, including making the Kinect a separate product, making the price of Xboxes more affordable.
He also led the launch of Xbox Game Pass, a big change in the industry. While there are arguments about whether the subscription service is good or bad for the industry as a whole, it’s been an amazing game changer and a hail-mary for a brand that needed to do something drastic to stay in the game.
And, of course, Spencer has been carrying the Xbox since the brand collapsed. Under his watch, Xbox bought Zenimax and Activision-Blizzard for huge sums each, and brought in many other studios that helped make Xbox the biggest publisher in the world. When he was at the helm, Xbox had the biggest IP in the world.
Speaking of which, that’s Spencer’s current legacy – Xbox is now multiplatform, publishing its games on PC and PlayStation.
I’m sure the debate over whether Spencer was good or bad for Xbox will continue for years to come. Whatever it was, the man deserves respect for taking on such a difficult challenge. After all, the Xbox was at the top of the heap only once, and it’s been at the back for most of its existence.
But all this leads to one question: did Spencer and his right hand Sarah Bond go willingly, or did they push? The fact that they both left at the same time is suspicious, and would seem to suggest that they are both being fired by Microsoft now that the Xbox is headed for its new future as….er, whatever that will be.
Another option is that Bond is unhappy that he won’t be taking the big seat and just walks away. Even if he is so loyal to Spencer that he doesn’t care about the job without him there. After all, his departure will mark another big change for Xbox, so maybe he just doesn’t want to be involved with it going forward.
Spencer talks about Bond’s resignation in his memo, which you can read in full on Insider Gaming, but he just says he wants to leave to start a new chapter.
What do you guys think? Has Spencer’s run as Xbox CEO been good or bad? And is this really a retirement, or was this one of those big companies moving in the door?
