Xbox Copilot

MS

It’s a big rollercoaster ride over at Xbox these days, with new CEO Asha Sharma, ported over from Microsoft’s CoreAI division, making fast changes to the brand in an effort to begin a turnaround. It was announced yesterday that she was shaking up the leadership team, bringing over more of her previous CoreAI cohorts, which obviously raised eyebrows. And then…she shredded the concept of putting Microsoft’s signature AI system on Xbox entirely.

Here’s what Sharma said about aborting the in-process development of Copilot on Xbox:

“Xbox needs to move faster, deepen our connection with the community, and address friction for both players and developers. Today, we promoted leaders who helped build Xbox, while also bringing in new voices to help push us forward. This balance is important as we get the business back on track.”

“As part of this shift, you’ll see us begin to retire features that don’t align with where we’re headed. We will begin winding down Copilot on mobile and will stop development of Copilot on console.”

Coming from a Microsoft AI division, there was, of course, concern that Sharma would usher in more AI, even if in her initial comments, she said there was no place for “AI slop” in Xbox. Here, removing Copilot from Xbox, which was supposed to do things like give players hints and such as they played, speaks to both actually delivering on that, and also having the freedom to go against Microsoft’s broader AI plans, which has stapled Copilot to every product it makes. This may be part of a broader shift as Microsoft realizes it may have gone overboard with that integration.

It seems inevitable that AI in some capacity is going to invade portions of Xbox, as it will the rest of the industry whether that’s in development, optimization, QA and so on, but Sharma seems to be nipping two main, much-hated avenues in the bud here, dismantling the idea that Copilot on Xbox was anything Xbox players actually wanted and at least seemingly rejecting the idea of GenAI when it comes to Xbox games and/or branding. Perhaps that’s not said outright, but you might be able to infer that from the “slop” comment. If GenAI shows up in some new first-party game or some new Xbox ad, Sharma probably understands how fast fans are going to tear that to shreds. So, AI is largely going to be kept in the background, so long as she continues to understand that at least in the gaming sphere, this is not something players, on the whole, want to see.

In addition to cutting prices of Game Pass from its absurd, recent hike, Sharma seems to be doing what she can to work quickly in the areas she can access within just a few months here. Longer-term plans, like what to do about Microsoft’s Pandora’s Box exclusive policies, or how to sell actual hardware again with the Series X/S in a deep pit, are going to be tougher to address. But so far so good.

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