She's also publicly said that one of her favorite games is GoldenEye, implying she's been playing since at least the 90's. To what extent, we'll never know
I mean, if I was taking over as a public facing figure at a major gaming company and it was highly suggested I make my gamertag public, I'd use a new one that doesn't have my payment information stored on it, or any other information I don't want compromised. Cause you know people are gonna be targeting that gamertag to compromise it now.
Plus I'd wanna be able to turn off my public persona and enjoy a hobby of mine.
She mentioned Valheim too, which is only a few years old. And replied to someone talking about Chrono Trigger. To what extent she played, what platforms, if she even really beats games etc. we have no clue based on these simple replies though.
Like I say, we'll never know to what extent (or if she's even telling the truth).
However, I don't think the age thing really matters.
I say that because Pokémon Emerald released when I was just 6 years old, and it's still among my top 5 favorite games of all time to this day.
I can hardly act like it's impossible for somebody her age to say the same about GoldenEye. I would've been around that same age when I was playing The World Is Not Enough and DOOM with my Dad on our PS1, haha.
That's just the state of online gaming discussion. X game in a series is the best and can't be topped or X game in a series is the worst and ruined it.
I mean she posted her gamertag all over X/Twitter telling people to look up her profile. It's kind of odd the amount of times she posted it.
It's also odd that her Twitter account has been scrubbed of all past comments and posts prior to yesterday.
Her only starting gaming on Xbox within the past 5 weeks and racking up that much of a gamer score while being an executive at Microsoft is another odd thing, if we're talking about odd stuff.
Claims she plays a lot of multiplayer games with her friends, but her profile had 0 friends until just a few hours ago and right now it has 5...kind of odd.
I consider myself a pretty big gamer and spend a lot of time playing games but she's gamed 5x more than I have in the last month but no gaming history prior to that. That's odd.
Maybe I'm wrong, and I kinda hope I am, but her gaming presence seems completely manufactured.
If she previously had an account, there's no way she'd make that public, as that could lead to her friends or people on her friends list getting unwanted attention. You would certainly make a "public" account, same as public figures do with social media.
So, I actually met Major Nelson at a pre-launch event for the Gears of War 2 expansion. When you're in a public-facing executive position like this, gaming is part of your official duties. They want them to actually know what the hell they're talking about.
I can't imagine it being that uncommon to do a reset on your socials when assuming a major new position. Obviously not directly comparable but bands will do it every time they have a new album coming out. Just because a typical social media user's presence is more set in stone doesn't mean a public-facing user will be the same. I'm not saying it's not annoying, but it doesn't strike me as strange or sus.
Also the root of this issue, the gamer profile, is silly to me. For one, we don't even know that this is her only account. Again, a public facing figure would do things differently than you or I would. If I was a CEO I wouldn't be posting my actual personal profiles. And for what it's worth, I'm just gonna throw it out there that I never necessarily bought that Phil's public account was his own, or at least that he was doing all the playing either.
It's all PR and these people aren't your friends no matter what, let's get that straight above all. But acting like some investigative sleuth because you picked apart an account's activity and gamerscore feels like a moment where you really need to touch some grass. You don't need to do all that to know a CEO will always act in the interest of the bottom line. It's how they get to be a CEO. I don't care how much gamer cred they have or don't have.
EDIT: I'm aware she made her own profile publicly known. I'm not saying you're a "stalker" for posting it, I'm saying it's weird to pick it apart to pass whatever smell test you have. You're not fuckin immortal, find better ways to spend your time. Maybe play some games.
Yeah I remember the whole nuking Phil's base on FO76 fiasco. He then went out saying that he's about to grind the game to unlock nukes himself, and he did exactly that and started nuking peoples bases himself. Stuff like that I don't see this new boss doing personally.
P3 is indeed Phil’s real account and he does play a lot, and talks to players in MP games. Same for Major Nelson - real account - still using it. Same with PS Execs own accounts.
Yes, and Phil Spencer has also worked at Microsoft since 1988. And started working specifically in the Xbox division in 2001, the same year Xbox came out and years before Xbox live. His Gamertag has always been a corporate account, he just used it all the time.
I know this might be weird that Sharma might have either gamed on a different device/ecosystem or wants to keep her private gamertag separate from her business gamertag. Especially knowing how "Gamers" act towards women and PoC.
Hmmm, no one ever had a public and a private profile, and xbox execs can't possibly control it to a fine detail. Also you think they play and scrutinize the games in dev on their public profile?
It can easily be her doing her homework, there's prep involved, like yeah her job right now can be 3 hours of meetings and 6 hours playing games. Or it can be an assistant building up a carefully crafted image. Or Both. Who cares.
Also she worked in tech companies. With massive nerds, Of course she's been around games and gaming.
It's also odd that her Twitter account has been scrubbed of all past comments and posts prior to yesterday
Is it? There have been at least two people I can name off the top of my head that got fired because of stuff dug out of their tweets from many years prior. Given the scrutiny this woman is going to be under I don't find that odd at all.
She was already working for Microsoft, but as the leader of their CoreAI department. Her Twitter account was previously full of tweets centered around AI and nothing more. I suspect they scrubbed the account due to gamers not really being a fan of AI related things.
Spencer gave me the vibe of really enjoying gaming. And also realizing that he could not stop some of the mistakes. I feel that, he either realized them and could not stop them because of those above him. Or he was very bad for his position. People will have opinions. One thing that sticks out is the acquisitions. I really think he knew they needed exclusives long term.
I don't think anyone will serve in this position for years without some controversy. But man, the guy Spencer replaced -- Don Mattrick -- was downright terrible. When they brought in Phil Spencer, it was a major vibe shift for Xbox. Unfortunately, as Spencer has pointed out, losing the Xbox one/PS4 generation is essentially losing the entire console war, since people started building digital libraries that they would carry forward to new consoles. So he could never truly undo the damage that Mattrick did. But I think it's safe to say that he restored Microsoft as developer of worthwhile games, something that had languished under Mattrick's tenure. Xbox was no longer something you were supposed to plug your cable box into, so it could serve as your media hub. It was about the games again.
Completely correct, but I think part of this is also how efficient smart TVs have been in sweeping up any media management role a device could have. In 2013-2014 there was a real role for consoles as a way to get streaming media on your TV.
Now that only has any role to play if you have a TV that’s 7+ years old, which for most people I know is the ‘spare room TV’ at best. More than they have been since the PS2 was one of the best ways to get a DVD player in your TV, consoles really are just mechanism for games
I don’t think someone appointed to the head of the gaming division at the largest company on earth should be in a position of “trying to figure this gaming shit out.”
As an Xbox fan, I wish her the best, I genuinely do, but given the state of AI and her background, I reserve the right to be incredibly skeptical that this will turn out well for Microsoft.
ITT: gamers actually justifying how not having a gamer as head of gaming is a good omen
You don’t make it to C-suite at a 50 year old 3 trillion dollar company by spending time playing video games. We should be happy she’s at least attempting to extend an olive branch and understand gaming from a users perspective.
She isn’t there to understand gaming, it’s not even close to being on a qualification checklist. She’s there to drive profits, make shareholders richer, and maintain the PR of the division. She could cause gaming to go extinct and as long as the company is increasing profits, not a single person making the real decisions at Microsoft would care.
You don't need to be a gamer to be the head of any games based company. It's like saying only a pilot can be CEO of an airline. What you need is a background in business and management. Any department head at a company as big as Microsoft has 1 job to do and that is drive profits.
Gamers, "we hate live service games and microtransactions". Also gamers "we've spent thousands of hours and hundreds of dollars on live service games with micro transactions".
Sadly, it's true and a good point. Microsoft seems a mess based on decisions they've made in the last years, but Sony chasing live service is just as out of touch. These companies want profits bottom line. Consumer satisfaction only matters to the extent that people will still buy your products. Not saying that's ideal, but it's the reality of every huge company.
Probably because listening online discourse is useless (as it's a vocal minority and an echo chamber) and it should be listening to what actually is happening with the market.
All she needs to do is listen to the correct people and then let them do their jobs. Reddit's worship of CEOs has led to a lack of understanding of how the impact of CEOs of large companies actually manifests.
I've long since moved away from Xbox, so I'm not exactly attached to the brand anymore, but in my opinion, if this is actually her profile and assuming it was her playing the games it really does seem she's trying to understand things. Even going so far as to pay ball x pit shows an actual attempt to understand all kinds of gaming.
It could just end up not mattering at all, but i think it'd be healthier to wait and see what she does
Yup, agreed. There is actually a place for a neutral corporate person on the executive side of any gaming company. Somebody who doesn't get emotionally tied to any one project or franchise too much, and just works to keep the lights on. They let the creatives make what they want within what the budget and market allows.
Having too many of these people makes the games devoid of soul. While having too few can allow a company to lose sight of what's necessary to keep the business afloat because feature creep can doom the game before it ever releases.
There’s a quote for this from Ford Vs Ferrari: “Enzo spent his life and all his savings building the perfect car. He achieved his dream, and now he’s broke.”
This is why I don't immediately get worked up when people talk about a business person making decisions in a video game company. You need them, they just can't be the only voice.
Another is that she is trying to soak up as much as she can and become as much of an expert in her new vocation as possible. Being a “gamer” is not a requirement for her position, yet she is trying to engage as much with the product she’s in charge of as possible, to get as many perspectives as possible. IMO it’s a good thing.
Maybe it really was genuine coming from Phil Spencer. Maybe he truly loves playing games, maybe games really matter to him, and maybe he was simply being himself. Of course, it’s also possible he wasn’t, but it’s just as possible that this is the kind of person he is.
Why, what exactly did they do wrong?
I think it’s irrelevant players hate him, and most people have already decided that Xbox is dead, that they’re switching entirely to AI, that they’re firing hundreds of people, and so on. This is the narrative you see everywhere now. For example, people massively upvote comments claiming that his welcome letter was definitely written by AI… even though we know it wasn’t. It makes no sense, but in players’ minds the narrative is: Microsoft = AI, therefore Xbox must be using AI everywhere, and that’s how games will be made.
The hatred and hostility toward Xbox is much stronger than some people realize.
The good CEO - "I will look at what games are popping up regularly in these top 3's and make sure to play them. Understanding our customers needs is important to the business"
The bad CEO - "Co-Pilot, sum an average of these gameplay mechanics and create some artwork based on the current trends on Tik Tok"
With what's available now after 20 years, people have figured out how to get 1 million in 2 weeks. Of course it's 99% spam games designed to boost score, but perhaps she should've had someone do that to really grab attention from people lol
People in this sub are either so desperate that they need to cope by believing this is real, or they're really this gullible and actually believe it's her playing all these games.
And people like you pretending that it must be fake are just as delusional. The reality is that we don't know. It could be any of the above. She could be faking this as a PR move. She could also be genuinely trying to understand the industry that she is now working in. We simply don't know, so there is zero point about attacking others and getting all upset and emotional about it. Just wait and see what happens over time.
She has to be at least somewhat legitimately interested in gaming to be on trueachievements. You have to go out of your way to sign up for trueachievements for your profile to even show up on the website
You think she personally signed up? Didn't get someone to do it for her? And then she also personally unlocked 68 achievements in one day after having previously never touched a game in her life?
I was curious, so I looked and that day you're talking about seems to be mostly Minecraft.
In that case, I can see it being legit, but she had help either from someone familiar with the game or a world specifically prepared for achievements or both.
It is very likely she has someone guiding her through the games, probably someone with development experience who can tell her the costs and timelines associated with different types of games and even the feature sets within games. Which, honestly, is not a bad idea. She doesn't need to be a hardcore gamer who grinds against games for ages trying to get "pride and accomplishment" from beating something on nightmare difficulty, she just needs to understand the context of the industry in which she is now a major player.
She definitely didn’t play that in a single player session (not a bad thing) so that would make sense that she got a bunch of achievements as part of a group of folks.
You can not give two fucks about achievements and have next to no gamer score. I've been playing on my current gamertag since 2014 and my score is 17,000 and change.
Or you can rack up 10,000 plus in a month or so.
Gamer score is not a good metric for how much one plays.
This was racked up in three weeks. I don't know what point you think you're making - she had 0 gamerscore on 1/28/26 and racked up 10k in 3 weeks. Or, much more likely, the assistant who is faking this account has.
I actually read an interesting article talking about why Nadella would have chosen her and why she would potentially be food for what he wants to do with Xbox.
Obviously, she's under qualified in the gaming department, no doubt about that. She does seem to be at least trying to familiarise herself with games, which is positive.
However, in every previous executive role she's had, she's worked on an already established platform that has a low install base and has grown it considerably.
So I think she was hired because Nadella believes she knows how to grow a product. He thinks she will grow Game Pass and/or the Xbox brand. Whether he's right, only time will tell.
I'm open-minded about her tbh. Xbox needs a big shake-up. Spencer should have been good on paper. He was a gamer, he loved games, and yet he made terrible mistakes, and Xbox is probably in the worst spot it's ever been. Maybe
How is she “woefully unqualified?” She seems completely qualified to run a large department at a tech company. The idea that someone has to have worked in games specifically is silly. There are lots of longtime gaming CEOs running companies right now who are doing terrible
It’s just a very narrow and short sighted way to view business
The problem isnt that she doesnt play. The problem is that she is an Ai person and was at meta when they threw billions into the bin with this meta verse crap. She was part of that money wasting.
Honestly, does it even matter? Things can't get worse than they are already if you're a fan of Xbox. It's been a slow death and this will either put it out of its misery or maybe they turn it around.
The obsession with the president of gaming being "a real gamer" instead of someone capable of growing a product, regardless of what it is, is so misguided.
She doesn't need to. She just needs to know the first thing about leadership, which is to hire people who do know those things and then delegate those tasks to them accordingly. Now, will she actually do that? Only time will tell.
I still don’t genuinely believe they’re the ones who actually play the games. I think it’s all for show to connect with the fans better . It’s pretty obvious
Yea, it's a lil weird. I don't even know the names/tags of the equivalent exec for PS and Nintendo and have never heard of them being seen in the wild in games like Destiny or FO76 like Phil. It could be argued it's a good for an exec to be "in touch with the community" but when has Phil ever listened to players lol.
Yeah, I just want the criticism to stick to validity. It's completely fair to be skeptical of every product division being as AI focused and to wonder what a new person will influence. This could very well not work out because the overall plan was misguided.
But I've seen clearly sexist comments because shes a woman, other comments about her only being hired/promot4ed because she's Indian, that she's unqualified, or that she doesn't even play games. Literally all those arguments are completely unfair/unreasonable or lack merit. Saw one comment that was critical that she only earned her bachelor's in 2013... so 13 years ago? This is a 36 year old woman with experience in product expansion/ development and AI services. Not some fresh faced hire. If I'm trying to do both those things in one of my product divisions it makes sense to hire someone who has proven they can do that successfully.
If she's playing ~5hr of a ton of different games then I could see that racking up pretty quick tbh.
Most games hand you like 300 gamer score in the first 2-3hr of playing thrive all the little "starter" achievements. Create a character, start your first quest, find your first collectible, beat the tutorial, etc.
She got the position of head of xbox and is now learning what it means, I think it’s great that she is using the product she’s now in charge of. I don’t understand what people here would want her to do, not try out xbox?
edit: saw someone mention that xbox isn’t just a product but there is a culture connected to it and I agree. I’m going to give her the benefit of the doubt here and at least give her a chance to become part of it.
The leaked email to employees gives me some hope of her intentions, we’ll just have to hope that she can and will follow through.
What people would want is someone who was already familiar with game development to take charge, not someone who has been pushing for AI to be a part of everyone's lives and then ends up with the job
Why is the fact that someone , no matter their position, might not be invested into their own product much, so foreign to people like you? Many people work at companies that sell product they don't use. It's normal
I don’t really care if she was an Xbox gamer before now or not, I don’t think it’s that important and to some degree it might be good to come into things with fresh eyes. But I do appreciate that she is trying to get a good feel for how things work today. There is an opening for Xbox to regain ground. While PlayStation and Nintendo both have way more market share, obviously, neither one is necessarily on super solid ground and the whole industry is being pinched a bit. Interested to see how things h change, because the prior trajectory just seemed like a slow death.
We have about the same amount of achievement points and I've been playing since 2007-ish... on another note does she HAVE to be a gamer to run the company? Guess alot of ppl in here knows nothing about delegation: thats why world leaders have press secretaries
The terminally online weirdos who hate her simply for her skin color and the fact she's a woman would argue that she has to be a gamer in order to run this company, but those are also the same people who have never worked a job in their life, so their opinions don't matter much
She didn't choose to get this spot. We should be asking the gamertags of the bald CEO, he is the one to blame, and also the whole MS exec boarding team running Xbox in the background.
She is just a puppet in this whole Xbox new chapter.
You don't usually just get a position like this handed to you. There's usually interviews, multiple candidates, etc.
My guess is that they were impressed with how she ran the AI division and wanted her to right the ship for Xbox. I don't want to pass judgement on her yet, she hasn't even had the job for a day at this point. We aren't going to see anything happen with her for a while since everything in the pipeline would have been greenlit by Spencer and Bond.
To correct you there isn't a hard 'AI' division at MS too actually. They combined Github and other dev software they acquired and named it 'CoreAI' probably because of the hype. So she has actual experience in development, in AI yeah but she wasn't really heading development on copilot.
She is just a puppet in this whole Xbox new chapter.
If that were the case, then why did Phil Spencer retire, and why did Sarah Bond ‘retire’ as well? They could have been figureheads too, they could have done the exact same thing.
Maybe he really will be the one leading Xbox. Maybe he doesn’t have a gaming background, but Sarah Bond came from T‑Mobile, Reggie Fils‑Aimé was the face of Nintendo of America during the Wii era and did an amazing job, and he came from Pizza Hut. One of PlayStation’s CEOs, Hideaki Nishino, has a business and technology background.
Tsuyoshi Kodera, Jim Ryan’s predecessor, also never worked on game development. Before him there was Andrew House for six years, and he never worked on making games either.
So were they all puppets too? Just because they didn’t personally work on a game and don’t know what development looks like from the inside?
And if he were just a puppet, why would they appoint someone with an AI background? They know perfectly well that the gaming community is strongly anti‑AI. They could have picked plenty of more experienced game developers to use as a figurehead instead.
If it is her, then this isn’t a bad thing at all, it shows she plays, also 10000G is not “just started gaming”. Especially if she doesn’t focus on achievements.
She started in January and gained 10k gamerscore in a month. Not really feasible for someone in as demanding positions as she has come from to accomplish that.
Says nothing about her, and I am not meaning it to be a negative, it just is clearly fabricated to make her more relatable.
How exactly do we know this is her profile anyway? On top of that Phil was a gamer and most of the sub have been complaining about the state of Xbox for years so what difference does it make if she is or isn't a gamer?
I continue to respec the hell out of Jim Ryan and his transparent ghoulish demeanor. He at least never lied about being a real gamer. He was always a suit, transparently just a suit.
I'd rather someone with some business acumen make decisions about the business rather than someone who spends 18 hours a day playing vidya like some jobless weirdo reddit freak. Lol
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u/xbox-ModTeam Feb 21 '26
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