Xbox leadership pushes Copilot changes
- Xbox CEO Asha Sharma told staff on May 5 that Xbox is killing Copilot on consoles and winding it down on mobile while reshuffling leadership. - The clearest signal is who’s coming in: Jared Palmer, Tim Allen, Jonathan McKay, Evan Chaki, and David Schloss in product, design, growth, engineering, and cloud. - This lands after four gaming revenue declines in six quarters, with Sharma pushing faster shipping and more focus on players and developers.
Xbox’s latest reset is not really an AI story. It’s a platform story. Asha Sharma, who took over Xbox in February, used her first big internal reorg to do two things at once on May 5: scrap Gaming Copilot for consoles, start winding it down on mobile, and install a new leadership bench aimed at shipping faster. The point seems pretty clear — less energy on flashy assistant features, more on fixing the parts of Xbox that players and developers actually feel every day. ### What actually changed? Sharma told employees Xbox needs to “move faster,” and then backed that up with org-chart changes. She pulled in several people from Microsoft’s CoreAI group and outside companies she knows, while also promoting existing Xbox leaders. On the product side, the biggest public-facing decision was to stop developing Copilot for console and wind down the version that had been running on mobile. ### Why kill Copilot now? Because Sharma seems to have decided that this version of AI wasn’t solving the right problem. Copilot for Gaming was introduced at GDC in March 2025 as a kind of chatbot sidekick — something that could offer tips, coaching, and reminders about where you left off. A beta reached mobile and PC apps, and later the ROG Xbox Ally handheld, with graphics, discovery, and personalization — basically invisible utility instead of a talking assistant. ### Who got put in charge? The incoming names tell you what kind of rebuild this is. Jared Palmer is moving over to work on product, engineering, developer tools, and infrastructure. Tim Allen will lead design. Jonathan McKay, whose résumé includes Meta and OpenAI, will run growth. Evan Chaki will lead a forward-deployed engineering team to build a content-first one. ### Who’s leaving? Two long-tenured Microsoft executives are stepping back. Kevin Gammill, who had oversight of Xbox user experience and game development platforms, is departing. Roanne Sones, who led devices and ecosystem, is taking leave before moving into an advisory role. So this is not just additive hiring. It’s
