Although she has only been CEO of Xbox since February, Asha Sharma continues to make waves for the console, restructuring key roles at the company and killing console Copilot are just the next orders of business.
After focusing on highly requested console features like reducing the price of Game Pass and rebranding Microsoft Gaming back to Xbox, Sharma is continuing to reorganize the Xbox platform team, as well as make big decisions when it comes to the console platform. This week, Xbox CEO Asha Sharma has not only reshuffled the executive deck at Xbox but has also effectively killed Copilot on the mobile and console platforms.
It starts with the change in leadership. Asha Sharma made extensive leadership changes to the leading roles at Xbox yesterday (posted via X) and put former executives from CoreAI in their place. Jared Palmer (Former CoreAI VP of Product) joins as VP of Engineering, Tim Allen (Former CoreAI VP of Design) joins to lead design, Jonathan McKay (Former CoreAI Head of Growth) joins to lead console growth, data platform and analytics, and Evan Chaki (Former CoreAI General Manager) joins to simplify development and improve how Xbox operates.
There are a lot of people joining the console team from Microsoft’s CoreAI team. While it does appear that Sharma is picking and choosing favourites from her former team, the former colleagues are here to bring the Xbox organization more technical expertise all around. In an internal memo, Sharma addresses the new appointees and states, “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.”
Xbox needs to move faster, deepen our connection with the community, and address friction for both players and developers.
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…
— Asha (@asha_shar) May 5, 2026
On top of the new leadership changes said to “get the business back on track,” Asha Sharma also revealed plans “to retire features that don’t align with where we’re headed.” Xbox is winding down Copilot on mobile and will stop development of Copilot on console. This shift means Microsoft is willing to fold on Copilot as a feature in its entire ecosystem of products, allowing Microsoft Gaming to get back to what’s important. Microsoft made a big deal about gaming Copilot in 2025, and said last March that the gaming-focused Copilot would be coming to current-generation consoles sometime in 2026. That is definitely not happening now.
As Microsoft’s gaming division continues to see a tremendous shake-up, the new leadership at the company, led by Asha Sharma, are trying to bring the console back to what it once was (as claimed in her many X posts). While fans have hit the internet expressing skepticism regarding the new CoreAI-fronted executive branch of Microsoft Gaming, it remains uncertain how things will shape out so far.