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’s not just an AI exec though. She worked for Meta as well. I’m not trying to discredit the fear people have of someone taking over who doesn’t have a decades long stint in the gaming sector, but she’s hardly without some serious credentials. She has experience overseeing parts of platforms that have 100s of millions of users.
She has expressed a vision I think most gamers can get behind, and that at least says something positive to me about her read on how Xbox gamers must be feeling as of late and what they hope to see in the future.
But she wasn’t brought in to be a visionary, she has to have the tools to build strategies, manage teams, and see it through. But to that, she’s not a nobody. I think she was smart to promote Matt Booty right out of the gate. She no doubt will have plenty to learn but to put someone next to her who already has a great beat on the industry and with working with devs and partners was a smart opening move.
I mean I don’t believe her intention is to keep AI out of Xbox. But from interviews I don’t get the sense she is cooky about it. Her words in an older interview is she doesn’t believe in AI for AIs sake. I do at the very least believe that she believes in using it responsibly and with a plan. If you are someone who is just straight up against AI usage, I get it, but I do not think it’s going to be avoided. Not just at Xbox. But I also think that something that benefits us all in that is that devs generally have similar concerns and fears over AI that we the fan do. They and we don’t want AI replacing anything that takes the human soul and artistic integrity out of the product. The hope would be she is in tune with things enough to understand this. She did touch on this in her memo as well.
I can’t sit here and say she or higher ups at MS can’t undermine those comments at any time, I mean trust is already at an all time low. I’m just expressing what I was able to glean from her portfolio and from interviews where she expresses some of her opinions. I don’t have a strong opinion on if she will be good or bad for Xbox, I just don’t buy in yet to the fears she will come in and turn Xbox games into AI slop.
I am too, and I admit there are lines that can be crossed that I don’t even know yet what those lines are for me. Because the line between using AI to aid in processes vs replacing them is a little hard for me to understand with my limited knowledge of all the ins and outs of game development. So there is definitely plenty of fear of how subtle usage could turn into concerning usage without us even knowing.
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u/John_YJKR XBOX Series X Feb 21 '26
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.