Xbox Co-Creator Seamus Blackley Walks Back Comments Comparing New Boss to “Palliative Care”
Jonathan “Seamus” Blackley, co-creator of the original Xbox, has compared the new head of the brand to “a palliative care doctor.” Soon after, however, Blackley insisted that Xbox won’t die.
Speaking to Dean Takahashi of GamesBeat, Blackley discussed the recent appointment of Asha Sharma and the future of Xbox. “Satya Nadella [Microsoft CEO and Chairman] has made an incredible number of bets and invested an incredible amount of money and credibility in the [transformative] model AI future.”
“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. I expect that the new CEO, Asha Sharma, her job is going to be as a palliative care doctor who slides Xbox gently into the night,” Blackley predicts.
“It just seems really true. I imagine asking somebody if it made sense to put a major motion picture studio into the hands of somebody who didn’t like movies, or a major record label into the hands of somebody who’d never seen a live show. Why would you do that? Well, you only do that if you’re looking at the problem in a more abstract way,” Blackley theorizes.
“The natural consequence of the focus on AI is that AI abstracts every problem from the minds of the executives who believe in it. 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.” He cautions, “The job of all these people is to just gently usher all of these business units into the new world of AI.”
“That is in no way surprising. It would have been shocking if they had somebody in there in a meaningful role who was passionate about games, passionate about the creator-driven business of games, because it would be in direct conflict with everything else Microsoft is doing,” Blackley proposes.
“Microsoft is a company that is now about enabling its customers by enabling AI to drive things. That’s at odds with the auteur model of any art, but specifically of games. Microsoft doesn’t have the problem that Apple does, or that Netflix does, where they have an auteur-driven content model to manage. Games are the only place where they have a content business,” he continues.
Speaking on Bluesky just 24 hours later, Blackley clarified, “I have been asked 59 times now, due to this @deantak.bsky.social [Takahashi] article, if I believe @xbox.com is dead. No.”
Blackley assures, “I love Xbox as my own flesh and blood. It’s the most wonderful thing to me. The distress it’s in kills me, haunts me. But progress requires introspection and realism. Learning is pain.”
Victoria Phillips Kennedy of Eurogamer also reported on other comments made by Blackley, but these appear to have been deleted at this time. He had reportedly described Xbox as “literally something I nearly died to bring into existence,” and as such, “seeing it struggle and being unable to act is hard.”
Assuring his deep love of Xbox, he reportedly added, “This is killing me, but I know a lot about organisations and business now, and I was being honest, not a PR a—–e.”
Per Blackley’s initial comments, one of the criticisms and concerns surrounding Sharma is her lack of gaming-based work. Her prior roles have included COO of Porch Group and Instacart, VP of Product & Engineering at Meta, and a Board Member of Home Depot and Coupang. Under Microsoft, Sharma has worked in Marketing and was President of CoreAI Product before becoming Xbox CEO.
Other criticisms have included her Xbox profile earning achievements just over a month before her new appointment, and playing an impossible number of hours in that time. Some have theorized this was an attempt to “legitimize” her in the position, with a deceptive edit to “her” profile.
On X, Sharma explained she created her Xbox account “to learn and understand this world,” and played and shared her account with her family. “But I get where this is coming from. I don’t pretend to be the best gamer, and even though I’m playing, that’s still not my goal. My focus is to make Xbox the best place to play, return to our roots, ship great things, and become stronger for the future.”
“And yes, I’m writing my own posts :)”. This is in relation to allegations of her replies on X to Xbox studio affiliates being AI-generated (poor grammar or being awkwardly phrased). In an interview, Chief Content Officer Matt Booty insisted “There are no directives on AI coming down.” Though Sharma stated in another there would be “no tolerance for bad AI.”
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