It is official, Asha Sharma is the new CEO of Xbox, taking over from Phil Spencer, who is set to retire in October. Now, Sharma and newly promoted CCO Matt Booty are talking about “the return to Xbox” with a commitment to hardware, preserving Xbox Games Studios’ culture, rejecting AI-created games, and building the next 25 years of Xbox.

EXCLUSIVE: We interviewed incoming Xbox CEO Asha Sharma to learn about her philosophies for games, Xbox studios, Xbox hardware, Xbox’s community, and the “return to Xbox.”

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In Sharma’s opening letter when it was announced that she would be succeeding Spencer as the Xbox CEO, one of the more prominent things that was said was about bringing a “return” to Xbox. “For me, the spirit of ‘Return to Xbox’ is about returning to the spirit that the team was founded on,” Sharma elaborated. “It’s that spirit of surprise, it’s the spirit of building something nobody else was willing to try – I’ve heard ‘renegade,’ ‘rebellion,’ and ‘fun’ used. That’s what I was thinking when I wrote that.”

Another thing that Xbox has shifted focus on is whether or not hardware would be a key pillar going forward with its multiplatform strategy. Many are wondering whether or not there would even be another Xbox. Sharma says that hardware is something she sees in Xbox’s future.

“Xbox players have thousands of dollars invested, in money and time too — it’s incredibly important for me to understand that and protect that,” Sharma said. “I am committed to ‘returning to Xbox,’ and that starts with console, that starts with hardware. You will hear more about that soon, we’ll have some announcements coming up. You will see us collectively investing here. We also know that there are a lot of players who aren’t on console or our hardware, and I want to deliver great games to them too. I need to learn more about what that can look like, what decisions were made, what we need to do going forward, and I want a little bit of time and space to do that.”

Matt Booty reiterates that they want to protect the Xbox ecosystem and shuts down speculation that Microsoft is going to make Xbox into a publisher.

“Our studio system is fully built around being first-party. We’re not built to just be a publisher,” Matt Booty explained. “It is core to our partnership with the Microsoft platform, being involved in early hardware decisions — all the work we’ve done to get games like Gears of War running great on new devices like the Xbox Ally, and so on. It is embedded within our structure, we’re not backing away from that. We’re committed to being a first-party games publisher in partnership with our first-party platform team.”

“The thing about other products that are taking off — they’ve built really great communities with their audiences. We’re the stewards of a lot of communities and we have been for decades. The thing that makes a community a community, is that you build for that core. What I don’t want to do is have any creator at Xbox dilute their focus to chase an emerging community,” Sharma explained. “If we want to invest in a new community, we’ll look at how to do that. But it’s really important that people stay true to their core when they’re building.”

“The thing I’ve learned when building platforms over my career, there’s kind of two things that really make a great platform — it’s the quality of the product that you deliver for the core user, and its the integrity of the decisions that stand behind it. There’s a big community at Xbox, and we’ll look at the right way to serve that community.”

Another big point of emphasis that has been brought up with Sharma taking over is whether or not AI would find its way into Xbox in a way that many in the video game community do not want to see. Speaking on the matter, Sharma said:

“I think that with any new technology, it brings possibilities as a tool, but even more important, especially now — we need to draw lines on what we won’t do. That’s what I attempted to do when I shared my opening letter,” she explained. “I will not flood our ecosystem with slop. We won’t have careless output, we won’t have derivative work. I deeply believe in the words that I shared previously there.”

Matt Booty also chimed in, putting to bed the rumors that Microsoft is planning to enforce some kind of AI directive on Xbox from the top. He says that developers are free to use the tools however they want.

“Just as a group, game developers are always eager to adopt new technology. When Photoshop showed up, it took about one month for it to appear in every game studio on the planet because it was so useful,” Matt noted that Xbox’s goal is for AI to be additive and supportive, rather than disruptive on its teams. “What I hear throughout our studios: it is the people, our artists, our coders, the writers — they’re doing the creative work. In my experience, any time there’s a new technology, what happens is there’s a need for more specialists, new specialists. It raises the bar on what the expectations are for the quality of the games.”

“We’ve got no pressure from Microsoft, there are no directives on AI coming down. Our teams are free to use any technologies that might be beneficial, whether it’s helping write code or check for bugs — things more in the production pipeline. At the end of the day as Asha said, we’re committed to art made by people. Technology is only in support of that.”

Speaking on building the next 25 years of Xbox, Sharma noted that it will be a challenge for Xbox, both externally and internally. According to Sharma, right now,, the goal is “proof over promise.”

“We know that the business has gone through some challenges. I’m going to use my expertise and the leaders that have the deep gaming depth around the table to help us grow the business, and make sure that we have an incredible next 25 years. I will listen, I will learn, I will communicate what we’re seeing, and what we’re doing. I think from here, the work is proof over promise. Matt and I are in it, every hour of every day of every night, I am fully in this thing. This team has brought it back before, and I’m here to help us do it again.”