Phil Spencer, Microsoft’s executive vice president for gaming, announced that he will retire after 38 years at Microsoft and 12 years leading the company’s video game efforts. Asha Sharma, currently the executive in charge of Microsoft’s CoreAI division, will replace him.
Xbox president Sarah Bond, who many believed was being groomed as Spencer’s eventual replacement, is also resigning from the company. Meanwhile, current Xbox Studios head Matt Booty is being promoted to executive vice president and chief content officer and will work closely with Sharma.
In his departure note, Spencer said he told Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella last fall that he was “thinking about stepping back and starting the next chapter of my life.” Spencer will remain at Microsoft “in an advisory role” through the summer to help Sharma during the transition, he wrote.
Spencer, who got his start at Microsoft as an intern in 1988, served as a manager and executive at Microsoft Game Studios in 2003. In 2014, he took over as head of Xbox and guided the company after the troubled, Kinect-bundled launch of the Xbox One. Most recently, he helped navigate the company’s 2020 purchase of Bethesda Softworks and its $68.7 billion merger with Activision Blizzard, including several regulatory battles that followed the latter’s announcement.
meet the new boss
Sharma, who joined Microsoft just two years ago after stints at Meta and Instacart, promised to preside over “the return of Xbox” and a “recommendation” in an introductory message.[ment] For our core fans and players.” This commitment will “start with the consoles that have shaped us,” Sharma wrote, but will extend “to PC, mobile, and cloud.”
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