{"id":504144,"date":"2026-02-26T00:08:11","date_gmt":"2026-02-26T00:08:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/504144\/"},"modified":"2026-02-26T00:08:11","modified_gmt":"2026-02-26T00:08:11","slug":"new-xbox-bosses-promise-return-to-xbox-with-hardware-and-renegade-spirit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/504144\/","title":{"rendered":"New Xbox Bosses Promise “Return to Xbox” With Hardware and “Renegade” Spirit"},"content":{"rendered":"

There has been a lot of talk about the new Xbox CEO, Asha Sharma<\/a>, since it was announced that she would be taking over from Phil Spencer<\/a>, and she has even made a handful of statements about her intent for the future of the Xbox platform\u2014even if some of those have simply led gamers and commentators to the conclusion<\/a> that she is there to usher Xbox into the night. However, in a recent interview with Windows Central<\/a>, Sharma and the new Xbox CCO (Chief Content Officer), Matt Booty, have commented on the immediate future of Xbox and what Sharma previously referred to as the “return to Xbox.” <\/p>\n

According to the two executives, the next steps revolve around the next-gen Xbox hardware platform, which is rumored to launch around 2028 as a PC-console hybrid<\/a>, and Microsoft’s first-party development efforts. Sharma said “For me, the spirit of ‘Return to Xbox’ is about returning to the spirit that the team was founded on… It’s that spirit of surprise, it’s the spirit of building something nobody else is willing to try,” going on to explain that “I think that our core Xbox fans and players have invested up to 25 years of themselves in these universes and our console. I want to make sure everybody knows I’m committed to Xbox, starting with the console. We’re going to keep meeting players where they are\u2014the world continues to evolve and change. We’re going to make sure Xbox is a great place for developers and players. We want to invest in reducing the artificial divide between different types of devices that they want to use with us. I think that’s going to mean a lot more investment in breaking down the barriers, in helping developers build once and show up across different hardware experience.”<\/p>\n

\"\"\/<\/a> Right now, I need to learn, candidly. About the ‘why’ of these decisions, what we were optimizing for, and what the data says about the Xbox strategy today. That’s the honest answer. I’m looking at lifetime value, not just what happened in a previous moment, or in short term efficiencies and things like that. The plan’s the plan until it’s not the plan.”For his part, Matt Booty emphasized the current focus on in-house and first-party games, and the importance of its first-party games: “Our studio system is fully built around being first-party. We’re not built to just be a publisher… It is core to our partnership with the Microsoft platform, being involved in early hardware decisions\u2014all the work we’ve done to get games like Gears of War running great on new devices like the Xbox Ally, and so on. It is embedded within our structure, we’re not backing away from that. We’re committed to being a first-party games publisher in partnership with our first-party platform team.” Addressing concerns about AI content in games, Sharma once again expressed interest in generative AI as a tool, but once again reiterated that there are lines she won’t cross when it comes to content: “I will not flood our ecosystem with slop. We won’t have careless output, we won’t have derivative work. I deeply believe in the words that I shared previously there.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There has been a lot of talk about the new Xbox CEO, Asha Sharma, since it was announced…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":504145,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[249127,64,63,3199,12344,12585,1791,16553,40169,253352,1000,2577,249352,44,249128,164278,253353,9664,7830,14267,105,7116,7476],"class_list":{"0":"post-504144","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-asha-sharma","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-boss","12":"tag-bosses","13":"tag-ceo","14":"tag-content","15":"tag-development","16":"tag-hardware","17":"tag-https-www-techpowerup-com-346762-new-xbox-bosses-promise-return-to-xbox-with-hardware-and-renegade-spirit","18":"tag-interview","19":"tag-microsoft","20":"tag-microsoft-xbox","21":"tag-news","22":"tag-phil-spencer","23":"tag-promise","24":"tag-renegade","25":"tag-return","26":"tag-spirit","27":"tag-strategy","28":"tag-technology","29":"tag-windows","30":"tag-xbox"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=504144"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504144\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/504145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=504144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=504144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=504144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}