Xbox CEO Asha Sharma: first party growing again, Game Pass to get flexible, Helix a family of devices

A leaked transcript of Xbox's 6 October town hall has Asha Sharma saying first party has returned to growth after an all-time low, Game Pass will become more flexible, and Helix means more than one...

AI-drafted from 3 sources. This story was written with AI from the outside reporting listed under Sources, and checked by automated tools before it went up. The originals have the full detail.

Asha Sharma, who took over Microsoft's gaming division from Phil Spencer in February, addressed every Xbox employee at a town hall on 6 October. Windows Central obtained a transcript and published it the same day. Xbox had announced the meeting itself. Matt Booty's 22 September note on the division's reset said the team would "come together as an ALL-XBOX team to reflect on our progress and look ahead".

The headline claim is a turnaround. Sharma said Xbox was declining in hours, players and revenue at the start of the year, with the old Game Pass strategy sending the balance sheet into "freefall". "We're making the right decisions to reinvest in the business, after an all time low, we've started to return to growth, more than 2 to 3 times what we were, and we expect that continue," she said. Windows Central later clarified that the chart she was using covered first party, meaning games Xbox owns and publishes, not the business as a whole. She named Gears of War: E-Day, Minecraft Dungeons 2 and World of Warcraft Forever as strong starts, and said positive brand sentiment is up 30 percent in a year.

Game Pass, consoles and Helix

Sharma's plan hangs on four words, core, content, creation and connection. Core means the console. She said Xbox does not have "the right" to grow beyond console if it cannot serve its most valuable players properly, so the Series X and S get investment again, through cloud gaming, disc-to-digital and Play Anywhere. Game Pass, which lost Call of Duty and took a price cut earlier in the year, will become "flexible for more players", with subscribers able to pick what kinds of content they pay for.

On the next generation, codenamed Helix, she was direct. "We are moving to a family of devices for Gen-10. There is not one device that fits all. We will certainly have a great console first, but we also know that many players will be on the go. There are some things that we are the best in the world to manufacture, and there are other things that will we partner on." The ROG Xbox Ally handhelds, built by Asus, are the template for the partnering part. "The operating system is starting to look really good," she added.

The storefront side

This is the part that touches anyone shipping a game. Sharma said Xbox is "simplifying" its target and streamlining the APIs for publishing across Series X|S, Helix and Xbox PC, long a sore point for small teams who find Steam far easier to ship on. She said Battle.net is close to Steam on user retention and will grow as a hand-picked store rather than an open one, with CD Projekt Red's games the first outside arrivals. She also claimed the Windows Store is the number one PC storefront in China, a claim Windows Central says likely excludes Steam users on VPNs, and said Xbox will keep investing in other PC stores where there is an audience, which means Steam.

None of this was said in public. The transcript reached Windows Central through staff and was checked against the site's own sources, and Xbox has not disputed it. Read it as a company telling its own people the bleeding has stopped, with the caveat that the proof offered was first-party growth from a low base, while the studio closures that produced the savings are still working through. Ninja Theory began laying people off on 5 October, the day before the meeting.

Sharma was named EVP and CEO of Microsoft Gaming on 20 February, promising at the time to "recommit to our core Xbox fans and players". Eight months on, the town hall is the first time the numbers behind that promise have been described, even if only to the room.

Sources

Image: Microsoft

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