- Original Xbox console designer Seamus Blackley believes Microsoft Gaming will go “off” under new management
- Blackley believes the job of new Xbox Gaming CEO Asha Sharma is to “just gently usher all of these business units into the new world of AI.”
- Sharma replaced former Xbox boss Phil Spencer following his retirement announcement last week.
The designer and co-founder of the original Xbox console, Seamus Blackley, believes that Microsoft will eventually close its gaming business as the company shifts its focus to AI.
Last week, Microsoft announced that Xbox Gaming CEO Phil Spencer has retired from the company and been replaced by Asha Sharma, an executive at Microsoft’s CoreAI division. The restructuring also saw the departure of Xbox president Sarah Bond, Spencer’s potential successor.
It’s a big moment for the company, and Sharma has since shared a message promising “the return of Xbox,” while highlighting AI and its commitment to content created by real people.
“As monetization and AI evolve and influence this future, we will not chase short-term efficiency or flood our ecosystem with soulless AI garbage,” Sharma. “Games are and always will be art, created by humans and created with the most innovative technology we provide.”
Now, in a recent interview with GamesBeat, the original Xbox co-founder said he believes Microsoft’s continued AI push will eventually see the end of Xbox gaming as we know it, despite Sharma’s promises.
“Xbox, like many companies that are not the core business of AI, is disappearing,” said Seamus Blackley. “They don’t say that, but that’s what’s happening. I hope that the new CEO, Asha Sharma, her job is that of a palliative care doctor who gently slides the Xbox into the night.”
According to Blackley, Microsoft chief Satya Nadella, who has invested a lot of money in the “future AI transformation model,” believes that AI will “subsume gaming like it would subsume everything,” which could mean the end of the traditional gaming business.
“The job of all these people is just to gently usher all these business units into the new world of AI,” Blackley said. “That’s what we’re seeing here. Whether or not they agree with it, whether they agree that AI has the potential to do that, whether AI will be successful, is a separate issue. But that’s what we’re seeing. That’s in no way surprising.”
He continued: “It would have been shocking if they had someone there in a significant role who was passionate about gaming, passionate about the creator-driven gaming business, because it would be in direct conflict with everything else that Microsoft is doing. Microsoft is a company that is now about enabling its customers to allow AI to drive things. That’s at odds with the auteur model of any art, but specifically gaming. Microsoft doesn’t have the problem that Apple has, or that Netflix has, where they have an author-driven content model. for “Games are the only place they have a content business.”
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