Microsoft Xbox CEO Asha Sharma speaks to employees at the Xbox Town Hall on February 24, 2026 in Redmond, Washington.
Provided by: Microsoft
microsoft Xbox CEO Asha Sharma told employees in a memo on Tuesday that she is appointing a new leader as the software company looks to get its video game division back on a growth path.
Sharma moved to Xbox in February after gaming chief Phil Spencer announced his retirement. She joined Microsoft in 2024 after holding executive positions at Microsoft. Meta and instacartPresident of Products for the CoreAI Engineering Group, which works on GitHub Copilot, Visual Studio Code, and other developer tools.
“We need to evolve how we work and how we are organized across our platforms,” Sharma said in a memo seen by CNBC. “Right now, it’s too difficult to make an impact quickly. We spend too much time internally instead of in the community, and we lack the depth we need at the fundamentals.”
Last week, Microsoft reported its fourth decline in gaming revenue in the past six quarters. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said the company is trying to win back fans of its Xbox, Bing search engine and other consumer properties.
of nintendo switch and switch 2 sony PlayStation 5 sales outsold Microsoft’s Xbox Series X and Series S consoles in the first quarter, according to data from video game website VGChartz. In April, Sharma touted price cuts for Game Pass subscriptions, which give gamers access to hundreds of titles.
Xbox is “bringing in new leaders with consumer and technology expertise that we don’t yet have,” she wrote in the memo.
Four of these leaders are from the CoreAI group, which overlaps with Sharma.
Jared Palmer, vice president of products at CoreAI and senior vice president of Microsoft’s GitHub subsidiary, will join Xbox as a member of the technical staff, working on products, engineering, developer tools, and infrastructure. He will also pay attention to issues of “taste,” Sharma wrote. Palmer came to Microsoft in October after serving as vice president of artificial intelligence app hosting service Vercel, which acquired his startup TurboRepo in 2021.
Tim Allen, vice president of design at CoreAI and senior vice president of design and research at GitHub, will also be joining Xbox to lead design. Allen joined Microsoft in November after nearly four years as head of design and research at Instacart.
Jonathan McKay, former meta director and head of growth for ChatGPT at OpenAI, will become head of growth at Xbox after holding that title at CoreAI Group.
Evan Chaki, General Manager at CoreAI, runs a team of forward deployment engineers who aim to simplify development and eliminate repetitive tasks.
David Schloss, Instacart’s senior director of product and growth, will be responsible for Xbox’s subscription and cloud business.
Kevin Gammill, Xbox’s corporate vice president responsible for user experience, game development, and publishing platforms, is leaving the company. Roanne Sones, Corporate Vice President of Xbox Devices and Ecosystem, will take a leave of absence after this summer before becoming an Xbox Advisor. Mr. Sones and Mr. Gammill each spent 24 years at Microsoft.
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