Xbox Boss Asha Sharma Announces Leadership Reshuffle in Bid to ‘Move Faster,’ Bringing in Former Microsoft AI Colleagues

UPDATE: Xbox boss Asha Sharma has confirmed that Microsoft has stopped development of Copilot on console.

In a tweet, Sharma said Microsoft will retire features “that don’t align with where we’re headed.”

Gaming Copilot, which was in beta, was designed as “your personal gaming sidekick with Xbox.” The idea was that players could ask for help anytime or anywhere while they were playing a game. “With in-game assistance, get unstuck, pass roadblocks, and level-up your gameplay,” Microsoft said. “The guide you want, when you want it. Brainstorm strategies and get tips or insights with personalized coaching.”

It would also provide users with gaming recommendations. Gaming Copilot is currently available in the Xbox mobile app, and on Game Bar for Windows 11, and on the ROG Xbox Ally handhelds.

“Xbox needs to move faster, deepen our connection with the community, and address friction for both players and developers,” Sharma said. “Today, we promoted leaders who helped build Xbox, while also bringing in new voices to help push us forward. This balance is important as we get the business back on track. As part of this shift, you’ll see us begin to retire features that don’t align with where we’re headed. We will begin winding down Copilot on mobile and will stop development of Copilot on console.”

ORIGINAL STORY: Newly-installed Xbox boss Asha Sharma has announced a major reshuffle of the company’s platform technology teams, as Microsoft’s gaming division seeks to rebuild its position and release Project Helix, its next-generation console.

In an internal memo shared with Xbox staff today, seen by IGN, Sharma stated that leadership change was needed to “begin building the capacity we need” to evolve the Xbox brand and “how we work.”

As part of the changes, Sharma is bringing four former colleagues from Microsoft’s CoreAI division, where she previously served, over to Xbox. IGN understands that Xbox’s previous stance on AI remains unchanged.

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“Right now, it is too hard to ship impact quickly,” Sharma wrote, adding: “we spend too much time inward instead of with the community; and we lack the capability we need in some key areas.”

For Xbox fans, likely the most widely-known name among the list of today’s changes is that of Jason Ronald, the Microsoft veteran with more than 20 years of experience building Xbox. Ronald has now been elevated to a position where he is accountable for Project Helix and the Xbox platform.

Elsewhere on the company’s hardware team, Roanne Sones, a corporate vice president for Xbox devices and ecosystem, will take a long-planned leave of absence later this year and return as an Xbox advisor.

CoreAI vice president of product Jared Palmer, will join Xbox’s platform-level content push “investing in the systems that make it easy to build, submit and scale high-quality games,” with a focus on “developer tooling, taste and infrastructure.” Tim Allen, another key CoreAI staff member, will join Xbox to lead experience design, in a role that merges “product design, design engineering, research, and creative with a fan-first focus.”

Jonathan McKay will become Xbox’s head of growth. Evan Chaki will run a new engineering group focused on removing repetitive work and simplifying development. Both are also moving over from Microsoft’s CoreAI division.

Other changes will see David Schloss, a former colleague of Sharma’s at Instacart, lead the Xbox subscription and cloud business. Kevin Gammill, a 20-year Microsoft veteran who has worked on the Xbox user experience, will meanwhile leave the company.

While the quartet of additions to Xbox from CoreAI will likely raise eyebrows — as Sharma’s own move did earlier this year — the changes are believed to be positioned internally as simply about bringing in the best talent, with experience working in Microsoft’s AI division seen as just another part of the company.

The changes follow another bruising quarter for Microsoft’s gaming division. In the three months ending March 31, 2026, Microsoft’s Gaming revenue decreased 7%, Xbox content and services revenue decreased 5%, and Xbox hardware revenue (money made from the sale of Xbox consoles) declined 33%.

“While we have made progress expanding the business and our margins, player and revenue growth has not yet met our ambition,” Sharma wrote last week via a post on social media. “We know we have work to do to earn every player today and into the future.”

Last month brought a new mission statement from Sharma an