It does not take a huge amount of insight to know that Xbox is in turmoil. From management changes to studio realignments to sliding sales to an identity crisis to mass and continuing layoffs, the division has spent the last few years lurching from one disaster to the next. This unavoidable fact should form the basis of any kind of coverage of Microsoft's gaming division, yet to read The New York Times today you'd be forgiven for thinking you'd woken up in an alternate dimension.
In the same month that Xbox's colossal layoffs continued apace, and once-foundational properties like Halo were shuffled off to new studios, the NYT has published an interview with CEO Asha Sharma that serves as one of the most jarring puff pieces I have seen in my 20 years covering this industry. And it doesn't even gently lead up to it. This is the first paragraph!
Asha Sharma, the 38-year-old chief executive of Microsoft’s Xbox division, approaches questions with the camera-ready positivity of Zohran Mamdani and the corporate pragmatism of Sam Altman. Like those other millennial leaders, she answers swiftly, with proverbs on demand
And that's quickly followed by
Sharma gave her personal cellphone number to journalists and influencers. Her new chief strategy officer tutored reporters on the company’s economic challenges. She skillfully dodged questions about her predecessor’s strategic blunders.
The gambit appeared to work.
Misogynistic and racist vitriol that had greeted Sharma, who was raised by Indian parents who immigrated from New Zealand to Wisconsin, dissipated a few weeks into her tenure. Influencers posted about her “impossible Xbox problem,” describing the $23 billion division like an underdog.
Excuse me, what the fuck? Why is any of this being published without any kind of query or pushback? What is her new chief strategy officer doing tutoring reporters? Why is dodging questions about the company's myriad problems skilful? And what exactly worked, when all credible criticism of Sharma comes from the fact she's an AI weirdo with no games experience who in only a few months has staggered from crisis to crisis with no visible solution other than mouthing a bunch of empty, Linkedin-friendly corporate platitudes?
Indeed the story is little more than a platform for airing those kind of platitudes, as it's riddled with chances for Sharma--and author Zachary Small--to say shit like
Now an early riser with three children and intense hobbies like boxing and racecar driving, Sharma has a singular focus on success. “All I can do is look at it from a first principles perspective,” she said. “And I think the industry will require disruption.”
And
Sharma spent a weekend in Tokyo with Kojima, posing in aviator sunglasses and an Xbox/Kojima Productions sweatshirt, and is traveling almost every week through the end of the year. On her birthday this summer, she was attending an Xbox Game Camp in Minneapolis with the incoming chief executive of Best Buy.
While she is away, a large counter in the beige Xbox building on Microsoft’s campus tallies Sharma’s time as chief executive. Over the atrium where employees take their coffee breaks, a banner exclaims “RETURN OF XBOX.”
Riley MacLeod
It's never necessary to publish a puff piece on a CEO. Ever. For the NYT to take its turn running one on the CEO of Xbox now, when it's in the middle of mass layoffs and desperate reorganisations, is journalistic negligence, not just from Small but from the Times itself. There's nothing to be gained from this! We learn nothing about Sharma other than the fact she's got a bunch of soundbytes, and Small contributes nothing to the conversation other than giving her the chance to get them in print, while relegating some of the most recent layoff news to the last two paragraphs of the story. And even then he lets her get a cheap last word in!
Achieving that goal will not be easy. In late September, Xbox announced that nearly 270 employees would be laid off, a move that gutted the team behind Halo, putting the future of the science-fiction series under Activision.
“I don’t think you sign up for roles like this for work-life balance,” Sharma had said weeks earlier with a little swagger. “I think you signed up for them because you believe in the mission and you do what it takes.”
If only the New York Times believed in its mission as much as it did aimlessly airing this kind of shit.
Luke Plunkett
