Xbox CEO Asha Sharma has denied reports that Microsoft is considering selling its Xbox business. The information reported in June that Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and CFO Amy Hood were considering splitting up Xbox entirely, then reported earlier this month that the two executives had “more recently supported Sharma’s plans to overhaul the unit.”
“The Xbox is not for sale,” says Sharma in an interview with The New York Times. “We will do everything in our power to make the company successful, and we will look at the right partnerships, the right operating model and whatever else is necessary to make that happen.”
It appears that Nadella and Hood favored a giant “reset” of Xbox as the plan for Microsoft’s gaming unit instead of making Xbox a joint venture or splitting off the gaming business entirely. Sharma announced his Xbox restructuring in June, calling it a divisional reset. Microsoft plans to lay off up to 3,200 Xbox workers during its 2027 fiscal year, which ends in June.
Nadella supported Sharma’s restructuring and layoffs during a recent appearance on the Sources podcast. “The team is streamlining, and Asha is, which is great to see,” Nadella said last week. “And then we have to invent the right sustainable business model that allows us to bring games to more and more people.”
The most recent restructuring saw Halo move under Activision, as well as the developers behind Sea of Thieves And The era of empires. Along with a major shakeup at Xbox Game Studios, recent changes appear intended to make Xbox a wholly owned subsidiary, as Microsoft does with LinkedIn.
Microsoft is reducing layers of management at Xbox, offloading smaller studios and focusing on its biggest Xbox franchises. This could eventually result in an Xbox sale at some point in the future, but for now the plan appears to be aimed at bringing growth back to Xbox. “We have a long way to go with Microsoft,” Sharma says, “and we’re going to take a long-term view.”
But as Sharma said in February: “The plan is the plan until it’s not the plan.”
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