We’re not sure why new Xbox boss Asha Sharma is conducting exclusive interviews with Windows Central little more than 24 hours into her tenure, but as we’ve all observed over the past few years, Microsoft executives tend to love to talk.
So, while she openly admits she needs to “learn [about the business] candidly”, here we have a full-length chat about her plans moving forward – or lack thereof.
The part that’s of most interest for PS5 owners is her comments on exclusivity, after she recently wrote on X (or Twitter) that she “hears” fans’ demands for first-party content to remain on Xbox only.
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Here’s her response, in full:
“Right now, I need to learn, candidly. About the 'why' of these decisions, what we were optimising 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.”
That last sentence seems to sum up years of Xbox flip-flopping to us: the plan’s the plan until it’s not the plan. So, right now, it seems we can continue to expect first-party games like Forza Horizon 6 and Fable on PS5, unless Sharma decides to steer the company in a different direction.
We know that CEO Satya Nadella has been a big supporter of Microsoft’s multiformat push in the past, and Sharma even mentions elsewhere in the interview that she knows “there are a lot of players who aren't on console or our hardware” and she wants “to deliver great games to them too”.
So, it all sounds like a bit of a mess, doesn’t it? It reads like Sharma wants to get the Xbox diehards back on side, but hasn’t had a chance to really absorb all of the information available to her and decide on a direction. Again, we’d question why she’s conducting an interview like this when she’s so fresh to the role.
The reality is that Xbox’s hardware footprint has utterly collapsed in the last few years, and it needs the wider reach of the PS5 to sell its software.
So, while it could walk back its position on exclusivity – a concept it recently described as antiquated – it’d take years for the firm to build back its install base, substantially lessening the value of its many brands in the process.
It’s also worth remembering that while Game Pass exists in its current guise, it’s not going to be selling many full-price titles on its own consoles, further putting pressure on it to make that software available elsewhere.
Thus, it’s really difficult to imagine Sharma coming to a different conclusion to her predecessors. But we suspect her comments here are just vague enough to spark plenty of speculation until she eventually opens her mouth again.