By Nelson Schneider - 07/12/26 at 03:07 PM CT
The new head of Microsoft’s Xbox Division, Asha Sharma, has been taking the scythe to the division and its studios lately, cutting down to the veritable bone in a (vain) attempt to reset Xbox into profitability – an impossible task considering it has NEVER been profitable. We’ve gotten news about some of the smaller Indie studios Xbox gobbled up being given their freedom again, as well as other studios – even big ones that we might expect to be immune – having their staff drastically cut and their projects canceled.
None of that should be surprising, after all. This IS Xbox we’re talking about.
However, a little tidbit of news managed to slip past my filter and made an impression by just how ludicrous it is. According to Sharma herself, the only profitable products in the Xbox portfolio are “Minecraft,” which Xbox acquired in 2014 when they bought out the Sweden-based Indie developer behind it, Mojang, as well as “Candy Crush,” which was, seemingly, an insignificant fragment of the multi-billion-dollar Activision-Blizzard-King deal. These two IPs and the internal studios that work on them are so important to the Xbox division’s future, that Sharma wants their leadership to report directly to her.
This is mindboggling. Even after we just learned that the average videogamer is pushing middle age, Xbox is set to double-down on monetizing “Minecraft” – an IP that appeals directly to children – and pushing Xbox’s presence in mobile gaming via King. It seems that Xbox plans to turn “Minecraft” into one of those “Super Games” that Sega recently gave up on, while simultaneously chasing the completely unrealistic profitability of microtransaction-driven Whale hunts on mobile. It seems that, no matter how much Sharma may move her lips about an Xbox “reset,” she’s actually continuing to lead the division down the same disastrous paths that got it into its dire situation in the first place.
Of course, Xbox continuing to poop where it sleeps is perfectly fine from my perspective.
