Microsoft Executive Vice President for Gaming Phil Spencer announced he will retire after 38 years at Microsoft and 12 years leading the company’s video game efforts. Asha Sharma, an executive currently in charge of Microsoft’s CoreAI division, will take his place.
Xbox President Sarah Bond, who many assumed was being groomed as Spencer’s eventual replacement, is also resigning from the company. Current Xbox Studios Head Matt Booty, meanwhile, 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, guiding the company through the aftermath of the troubled, Kinect-bundled launch of the Xbox One. More recently, he helped shepherd the company’s 2020 purchase of Bethesda Softworks and its $68.7 billion merger with Activision Blizzard, including the many regulatory battles that followed that latter announcement.
Meet the new boss
Sharma, who joined Microsoft just two years ago after stints at Meta and Instacart, promised in an introductory message to preside over “the return of Xbox,” and a “recommit[ment] to our core fans and players.” That commitment would “start with console which has shaped who we are,” but expand “across PC, mobile, and cloud,” Sharma wrote.