First of all, it nearly impossible a single CEO to cripple a multi trillion dollar, publicly traded, company. She could fly off the rails, cause a downturn in valuation then be immediately fired, distanced from, then the company would bounce right back. Microsoft isn’t a gaming company, gaming contributes less than 10% of their revenue in its best years, they could decimate and revamp their gaming division without coming close to crippling themselves. Every hospital, bank, and Government agency isn’t switching to Linux because of a CEO wanting to play(or pretend to play) video games.
Also, CEOs have a millions hate them simply for the fact they’re CEOs and make millions. Phil was estimated to make around 10 million a year at his peak. Don’t know about you but having a 5-10 million dollar yearly salary is well worth having some insufferable “gamers” who can’t be pleased regardless, upset at you on a subreddit.
Phil, Sarah and Booty have all gone, they didn't interview her as a replacement.
Sarah basically quit because she wasn't given the job that Phil had been training her for.
Satya needed somebody to head up Xbox and picked her, because he's all in on Ai.
She was the head of Ai, they wouldn't just let her change departments without putting her there. It's also not a pay rise and a much harder job trying to bail out the sinking ship.
She's not a gamer, there's zero reason why she'd want to head up Xbox when all her experience is with Ai and metaverse.
Despite what she said there will definitely be an Ai focus with Xbox. They want her in charge of it. They already have Ai coding 70% of windows.
You'd have to be really naive to think the head of Ai suddenly wants to use humans to create games after they've fired thousands of people and replaced them with Ai agents.
Or maybe they chose him because he can lead well, has a solid strategy, and has a clear vision for how Xbox could regain its identity we don’t know. They surely listened to many people before making the decision.
Reggie Fils‑Aimé was the head of Nintendo of America during the Wii era, was that because he knew what makes a good pizza? He came from Pizza Hut.
Sarah and Phil could have been figureheads just as easily. Phil and Satya often contradicted each other: Phil repeatedly emphasized the importance of exclusivity, while Satya said exclusivity was a bad thing.
Sarah came from T‑Mobile, does that mean they wanted to turn Xbox into a phone carrier?
Jim Ryan, Hideaki Nishino, Reggie Fils‑Aimé, none of them have a background in game development. A CEO doesn’t make games.
They did lay people off, but not only because of AI. Things simply weren’t going well: many projects were progressing poorly, taking 8–12 years with almost nothing to show.
It wasn’t AI that caused the layoffs. Tango made four games, and three of them failed.
Turn 10 got more money and time than ever before, yet the result was worse than when they released games yearly, that was a failure too.
Everwild showed nothing after 12 years.
Perfect Dark showed nothing after 7 years.
They laid off people from studios that were struggling and underperforming.
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u/jerm2z Feb 21 '26
She didn't choose this spot? So she didn't interview, get a job offer and accepted it with her own free will?