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Asha Sharma is the CEO of Xbox, leading Microsoft's gaming division overseeing console strategy, business decisions, and cloud gaming services.
Xbox CEO Asha Sharma set up XBOX LABS under CTO Scott Van Vliet and told staff its AI experiments may challenge Xbox's own business models. Her memo cites 72 billion hours of annual Xbox play, about five times the time spent writing code.
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Microsoft has created Xbox Labs, a small team of game makers, engineers and scientists, to study games rebuilt for hardware they were never made for. The Verge asked Microsoft about unauthorized use of its games and got no reply before publication.
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Xbox is putting its film, TV, consumer products, live events and partnerships work into one division, XP, organized around four investment areas. Separate teams already did this work, so the first change is who decides how a franchise shows up outside the game.
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Xbox has made Mojang president Kayleen Walters head of XP, a new four-division unit for Xbox's franchises outside the games. Her move leaves Mojang with its second new president since February, the cost of putting one franchise executive over brand extensions across Xbox.
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Xbox CEO Asha Sharma has put Series X|S consoles back at the core of the business, telling staff the old Game Pass strategy sent Xbox into 'freefall'. For studios that makes Series X|S the safe target, while Helix, the next generation, is still a plan without a date.
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Microsoft has won exclusive rights to stream Grand Theft Auto VI at its November 19 launch, according to The Verge's sources. PC players without a console get a launch-day way into the game, through a cloud service that starts rationing hours that same month.
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Xbox CEO Asha Sharma told the New York Times that Xbox is not for sale, after a summer of layoffs that hit the division in the thousands. For anyone planning around Xbox, the useful signal is which games the cuts spared and which ones Sharma has promised to fund.
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The unlimited streaming bundled with Game Pass ends in November. Microsoft says the change touches 4% of subscribers because longer sessions cost it more, and it has not yet said what extra hours will cost.
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Halo development goes to a new team inside Activision, Rare and World's Edge move with it, and Obsidian now reports to Bethesda. Xbox Game Studios keeps a handful of teams and 268 fewer roles.
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Microsoft cut 268 gaming jobs this week, laid off most of Halo Studios and moved Rare, World's Edge and Obsidian to new parents. Anyone planning around Game Pass or Xbox hardware now has to sort their commitments by what Microsoft has actually decided.
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The 268 roles Xbox eliminated this week take Microsoft roughly three-quarters of the way through a reduction of up to 3,200. The reorganisation around them makes Activision the home of Halo.
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Matt Booty's memo to Xbox staff moves Halo out of the studio built to make it, folds Rare and World's Edge into Activision, and leaves Ninja Theory in consultation on a proposed closure.
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Microsoft eliminated 268 roles on Tuesday and moved studios under its larger publishers, giving a new Activision team the next Halo while Halo Studios keeps a smaller crew on the games it has already shipped.
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Activision picks up Halo, Rare and World's Edge as this week's 268 eliminations take Microsoft's Xbox reset about three-quarters of the way through, a total that Matt Booty's memo counts the sold studios inside.
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Shaw told staff he is going at the end of the year. Microsoft has 111 days to replace the executive who has framed Azure's growth, the OpenAI and Anthropic partnerships and the Xbox problem. He is 64 and has not decided what is next.
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Staff describe a two-minute Teams call with microphones off and Slack access ending the same morning. Roughly half of the announced 3,200 cuts are still to come, and July set the template they will be measured against.
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Gates says technology executives are privately worried about AI's labor effects and are telling each other to stay quiet to protect fundraising, which leaves the people who must staff 2027 planning without a policy timetable.
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Circana has US console units down 39% in July and the average price paid up 16%. The platform splits say the price rises are still being absorbed, not refused.
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Circana puts July US console hardware spending at $282 million, down 29 percent year over year. The mid-life price cut, the industry's oldest demand lever, is no longer on the table.
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