Xbox creator says this is the beginning of the end, calls new CEO 'a palliative care doctor'

Seamus Blackley hasn't been a Microsoft employee for decades, but he was a key part of the core team that brought the first Xbox console to market, spearheading the movement and design of the original 'DirectX Box' that would compete with the likes of Sony and Nintendo. And with that context out of the way, in a recent interview with GamesBeat, Seamus Blackley shared his thoughts on the recent seismic shake-up over at Microsoft Gaming and Xbox.

2

With Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer and Xbox President Sarah Bond retiring, and newcomer Asha Sharma taking over with a history in AI, there has been a lot of speculation about what this could mean for Xbox's long-term future. However, communication from everyone has been on message, reassuring fans that Xbox isn't going anywhere and is committed to a future of games and new console hardware.

And with that, from Seamus Blackley's perspective, it's essentially the beginning of the end for Xbox at Microsoft. "Satya Nadella has made an incredible number of bets and invested an incredible amount of money and credibility in the transform model AI future," Blackley said. "Xbox, like a lot of businesses that aren't the core AI business, is being sunsetted."

"They don't say that, but that's what's happening," Blackley continues. "I expect that the new CEO, Asha Sharma, her job is going to be a palliative care doctor who slides Xbox gently into the night." It's pretty clear that Seamus Blackley believes that the future of Xbox is going to get swallowed whole by Microsoft's focus on AI.

"The natural consequence of the focus on AI is that AI abstracts every problem from the minds of the executives who believe in it," Blackley explains. "We're abstracting the problem of games as well. There's a core belief, and you can see it in what Satya said, that AI will subsume games like it will subsume everything. The job of all these people is to just gently usher all of these business units into the new world of AI. That's what you're seeing here. Whether or not you agree with it, whether you agree with AI having the potential to do that, whether AI will be successful, is a separate matter. But that's what we're seeing."