{"id":504806,"date":"2026-02-26T07:15:11","date_gmt":"2026-02-26T07:15:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/504806\/"},"modified":"2026-02-26T07:15:11","modified_gmt":"2026-02-26T07:15:11","slug":"xbox-co-founder-the-brand-isnt-dead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/504806\/","title":{"rendered":"Xbox Co-Founder: The Brand Isn&#8217;t Dead"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>            <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/xbox-co-founder-the-brand-isnt-dead.jpg\" data-caption=\"\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1200\" height=\"800\" class=\"entry-thumb td-modal-image\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/xbox-co-founder-the-brand-isnt-dead.jpg\"   alt=\"\" title=\"xbox-co-founder-the-brand-isnt-dead\"\/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Former CAA agent and game designer Seamus Blackley, who is best known for creating and designing the original Xbox in 2001, set the cat among the pigeons recently with comments over the executive regime change in Microsoft\u2019s Xbox division.<\/p>\n<p>Recently, the news came that longtime Xbox division chief Phil Spencer is exiting after several decades at Microsoft and over a decade in charge at Xbox, leaving the head of Microsoft\u2019s CoreAI division, Asha Sharma, running the Xbox division.<\/p>\n<p>In an interview with <a href=\"https:\/\/gamesbeat.com\/what-an-xbox-founder-thinks-of-the-new-xbox-ceo-seamus-blackley-interview\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">GamesBeat<\/a>, Blackley suspected that Microsoft is looking to sunset the Xbox:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cXbox, like a lot of businesses that aren\u2019t the core AI business, is being sunsetted. They don\u2019t say that, but that\u2019s what\u2019s happening. 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.<\/p>\n<p>The natural consequence of the focus on AI is that AI abstracts every problem from the minds of the executives who believe in it. We\u2019re abstracting the problem of games as well. There\u2019s a core belief, and you can see it in what Satya [Nadella, Microsoft CEO] said, that AI will subsume games like it will subsume everything.<\/p>\n<p>The job of all these people is to just gently usher all of these business units into the new world of AI\u2026 Asha is coming into games because her boss believes that games are going to be driven by AI. It\u2019s a very different approach. \u201d <\/p>\n<p>In the wake of that interview, Blackley has further clarified his comments.  Posting on <a href=\"https:\/\/bsky.app\/profile\/seamus.bsky.social\/post\/3mfmty3ggms2h\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">BlueSky<\/a> (via <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gamesradar.com\/platforms\/xbox\/xbox-is-not-dead-after-ceo-change-says-original-co-founder-its-literally-something-i-nearly-died-to-bring-into-existence-and-seeing-it-struggle-and-being-unable-to-act-is-hard\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Games Radar<\/a>), he says he\u2019s been asked dozens of times now \u201cif I believe [Xbox] is dead\u201d.  He says:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo.  I love Xbox as my own flesh and blood. It\u2019s the most wonderful thing to me. The distress it\u2019s in kills me, haunts me. But progress requires introspection and realism. Learning is pain.<\/p>\n<p>I love Xbox more than literally anyone. This is killing me. But I know a lot about organisations and business now, and I was being honest, not a PR a\u2013hole. Let\u2019s talk about it. It\u2019s literally something I nearly died to bring into existence. Seeing it struggle and being unable to act is hard.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In her official statement after her hiring announcement, Sharma said: \u201cwe will not chase short-term efficiency or flood our ecosystem with soulless AI slop.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former CAA agent and game designer Seamus Blackley, who is best known for creating and designing the original&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":504807,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[64,63,142132,105],"class_list":["post-504806","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-bigslider","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504806","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=504806"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504806\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/504807"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=504806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=504806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=504806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}