The ousting of Xbox's leadership was driven by their inability to execute on the "Xbox everywhere" vision, compounded by pressure from Microsoft's corporate leadership for unrealistic profit margins. The underlying strategy of pursuing mobile and cloud is not seen as the core problem.
Microsoft's aggressive mobile strategy was not primarily about competing with PlayStation, but a defensive move against irrelevance. It was driven by the fear that younger generations are abandoning consoles for mobile apps like TikTok and YouTube, and may never enter the console ecosystem at all.
While Xbox chased mobile and cloud gaming, it completely ignored the rise of the PC handheld market, led by the Steam Deck. This was a major strategic blind spot, as these devices primarily play Windows games—an ecosystem Microsoft owns but failed to capitalize on, allowing competitors to dominate.
Microsoft's ambitious plan for an Xbox mobile store, a key justification for the Activision deal, relied entirely on forcing regulatory changes to Apple's and Google's app stores. This high-stakes gamble on external factors failed, leaving the strategy with no viable path forward.
By 2022, Microsoft internally recognized its flagship Game Pass service had stalled on consoles and lacked expected mobile growth. This forced a pivot away from the "Netflix for games" vision, acknowledging the model's limitations and its potential to cannibalize more profitable game sales.
Asha Sharma's appointment is less about her AI experience and more about her background in platform scaling and user acquisition at Meta and Instacart. Microsoft is signaling that Xbox's primary challenges are in execution and growth, prioritizing operational expertise over traditional game industry experience.
Xbox's persistent third-place position isn't a recent issue. Losing the Xbox One generation to the PlayStation 4 was a critical failure because it was when consumers first built their digital game libraries, creating a powerful ecosystem lock-in for Sony that Xbox has never recovered from.
Instead of building another closed-box console, Microsoft's next-generation strategy involves convincing PC OEMs to manufacture "Xboxes." These would be PCs that boot into a Microsoft-controlled interface, attempting to capture store and subscription revenue from a broader hardware base and move away from direct hardware competition.