Xbox CEO Asha Sharma is shaking up the company’s gaming leadership, elevating several longtime Xbox employees into new roles and bringing in a number of new faces from outside gaming, including several with significant experience in AI development and implementation.
Per a memo written by Sharma, circulated internally, first reported by CNBC, and viewed by Kotaku, Sharma is “bringing in new leaders with consumer and technical expertise we do not yet have.” Those leaders include the following:
- Jared Palmer: Formerly VP of Product at CoreAI, where he worked under Sharma during her term as president of the division. Prior to that, Palmer was an SVP of GitHub, and VP of AI at cloud application company Vercel. Palmer will join Xbox’s technical staff working on product, engineering, developer tools, and infrastructure. CNBC reports he will also “pay attention to matters of ‘taste.’”
- Tim Allen: Another CoreAI and GitHub veteran, Allen was VP of design and SVP, design and research respectively, and also previously served as VP of design and research at Instacart (where Sharma was previously COO) and VP of design at AirBnB. Allen will now reportedly lead design at Xbox.
- Jonathan McKay: McKay spent nine years at Meta (where Sharma worked for four years as VP of product and engineering), beginning as a software engineer and rising to senior director of product by the time he departed. He then worked for a year at OpenAI on growth and revenue for ChatGPT before becoming the head of growth for Microsoft’s CoreAI last year. McKay will also serve as head of growth at Xbox.
- Evan Chaki: Chaki has worked with Microsoft for over eight years, starting as a group product manager and working his way to general manager of transformation on CoreAI. Chaki will “will run a team of forward-deployed engineers that will look to simplify development and end repetitive work,” per CNBC.
- David Schloss: Schloss is a long-time veteran of Instacart, where he’s been for over 11 years starting as a general manager and culminating in his recent role as senior director of product, growth. He will be Xbox’s new head of subscriptions and cloud.
In addition to these new leaders, Sharma is also elevating a handful of long-time Xbox veterans into new positions within her organization:
- Jason Ronald: Ronald is a long-time veteran of both Microsoft and Xbox, beginning as a senior lead program manager for Microsoft Game Studios back in 2006 and most recently as VP of Xbox gaming devices and ecosystem. He’s being promoted to be “accountable for Project Helix, and our platform.”
- Jason Beaumont: Another long-standing veteran of Microsoft, Beaumont began in 2006 as a group program manager working on Windows, and most recently was VP of Xbox experiences. He will now lead product, and also serve as interim head of engineering.
- Fatima Kardar: Beginning as a software engineer at Microsoft in 2001, Kardar was most recently the corporate VP of gaming AI after 25 years at the company. Though she will remain in her existing role, she is also stepping into a new position as head of a “newly formed Personalization org” that will focus on player-facing issues like search and discovery.
- Jenn Creegan: Having been with Microsoft since 1999 in a number of different roles, Creegan was most recently the VP of strategy, business model and insights. She will now lead the company’s media business.
And finally, a couple of long-standing Xbox veterans are stepping down:
- Kevin Gammill initially worked at Microsoft for five years in the 90s and returned in 2007 initially as a director of development in the education product group. He moved over to Xbox in 2010 as a partner group program manager overseeing “the Xbox 360 shell, OS, and development environments, Xbox One core platform (OS and development environments), and the end-to-end Xbox One X engineering efforts,” per his LinkedIn. Gammill then held a number of other roles in gaming over the years, most recently as a corporate VP of gaming ecosystem organization. In total, Gammill has 24 years of experience at Microsoft, and 16 on Xbox and gaming initiatives.
- Roanne Sones is currently the corporate VP of Xbox devices and ecosystem, having previously been a corporate VP in other areas at Microsoft prior to that for a total of 24 years at the company. She will take a leave of absence after the summer and return in an advisory capacity.
Kotaku has reached out to Xbox for comment. We did receive a copy of the memo circulated by Sharma, which reads as follows:
Team,
At the Town Hall, Matt and I talked about the opportunity for Xbox to be where the world plays. To get there, we need to evolve how we work and how we are organized across our platform. Right now, it is too hard to ship impact quickly; we spend too much time inward instead of with the community; and we lack the capability we need in some key areas.
Today we are making changes to our platform technology teams to begin building the capability we need. We are aligning our teams behind our four priorities. As part of this, we are promoting leaders who built Xbox and bringing in new leaders with consumer and technical expertise we do not yet have. This will allow us to go deeper in the areas that matter most and move faster.
On hardware, we are elevating Jason Ronald, accountable for Project Helix, and our platform. Roanne Sones will be taking a leave of absence after this summer and will be staying on as an advisor. We’ll share more on our go forward plans here soon, Roanne has been a thoughtful and dependable leader, and we support her taking this time.
On content, we are investing in the systems that make it easy to build, submit, and scale high-quality games. This starts with better serving our own studios, and in the future how we serve creators. Ashley McKissick will continue to lead this area. Jared Palmer will join as a member of technical staff, working directly with me on our most complex product and engineering problems, with a focus on developer tooling, taste, and infrastructure.
On experiences, we are bringing together our apps and infrastructure and putting more focus on design and quality. Jason Beaumont will lead the product and serve as interim head of engineering. Tim Allen will join us to lead Design, for the first time bringing together product design, design engineering, research, and creative with a fan-first focus. Fatima Kardar will refocus her team and now lead a newly formed Personalization org with a sharper focus on core player problems like search, discovery, and assistance. Kevin Gammill will be stepping down from his role as he considers what’s next. He has dedicated more than 15 years to Xbox and will support the transition. I’m grateful for his leadership and everything he has built here.
On services, Jenn Creegan will lead our media business, helping expand how we fund and support more affordable offerings for players. David Schloss will lead the subscription and cloud business, owning the full service, including benefits, pricing, and economics, with a focus on delivering great player value.
We are also standing up two new teams. Jonathan McKay will join to lead Growth, building our data platform, analytics, and experimentation systems so we can better understand player behavior and improve our core experiences. Evan Chaki will join Dave McCarthy’s team to lead a forward-deployed engineering group focused on removing repetitive work, simplifying development, and improving how we operate.
This is an important time for Xbox. Our goal with this change is simple: build a platform that is affordable, personal, and open by staying close to the work and the people we serve. We will continue to add the capabilities needed to get there.
Sharma has been working quickly to make changes around Xbox since her appointment as its new head back in February. Having inherited a division struggling with weakening sales and a souring brand image, Sharma has quickly established her era as one of a “return to Xbox,” though what that actually means for the platform’s future in practical terms remains somewhat murky.
Thus far, it’s meant a reevaluation of exclusive games as well as the company’s approach to AI (no specifics yet on what either of those means), a refocusing on Xbox consoles in direct contrast to the previous “This is an Xbox” campaign, and the decision to lower the cost of Game Pass while announcing that new Call of Duty games would no longer release on the service right at launch.
It’s far too soon to say how successful any of this is or will be—the company’s most recent quarter was financially another sad one, but Sharma also wasn’t actually in place for about half of it, and had literally just gotten there for the rest.
