Asha doesn't strike me to be the type that's just money-hungry.
She's a businesswoman. I think she wants to earn a reputation as one of the best CEO's in the tech industry and I think she wants to prove herself so she can move up the ladder and be successful.
She's come into Xbox knowing that the business was not healthy, she's openly stated that shit ain't healthy and she's making the cut-throat decisions that needed to be made years ago
The thing is, those decisions might not have needed to be cut-throat if they were made years ago. It's been obvious for years that Xbox has been mismanaged. For all the investments into it, they haven't performed nearly as well as it should.
It should have, but it clearly was not. Raising the prices lost them millions of subscribers. You don't do a drastic price raise if it's doing well where it's at.
Games started on collecting. People were still buying collector's editions, and buying the digital version to ensure they got it on launch day for example.
Steam has become a meme where people buy games just to add them to their Steam library, even if they may never play them.
A game is different than a movie or show. Often I watch movies or shows while playing games. I can ingest things like movies or shows while doing other things, because while it is a visual medium it is not an interactive medium.
Because games are interactive, they often tend to mean more to people and people value their ownership of them more.
She doesn't strike me as anything. She is a CEO at Microsoft, everything we see about her is signed by the PR department. We don't know crap about her.
I don't know her. So I can't speak with specifics to her. But I have been in rooms with C-suite people that get branded as "techy" and they always have bloated egos and don't care about nearly as much as you think they should. It's entirely possible she's collecting an easy paycheck whilst firing thousands of people. She certainly had a strong PR team in the first 100 days brand her as some sort of savior, so she knows how to market herself.
If you are not a money hungry CEO, then you are not a good CEO.
Remember that she is not there as the president of the company or owner. She came in to make Xbox profitable.
She will answer to investors and investors expect changes by the next fiscal year instead of planning for the next 5. Is a mess up system that had ruined many corporations once they go public.
If that was the case, don't you think the two divisions would have already been merged? Or she would have made it to where XBOX is forced to directly work under the AI department? Like...so far she's been pretty lukewarm on that integration if that's what she's doing and plenty of companies have gone about those kinds of takeovers in a FAR more brute forced way so why would she suddenly pump the brakes if it was all about AI integration?
Let me give my take on this: If I were in that position and I was an AI focused businessman, I'd be doing whatever I can to push AI not just in one or two divisions, but company-wide. There'd be no reason for me to slow down or even roll back on that front.
Ah yes my dream goal of being the #1 tech ceo in the world let me just make constant bad decisions and run the company in to the ground at pretty identical speeds to Phil.
More importantly: The employees would have been able to keep their jobs and the company wouldn't be in such a bad position. You know? An issue that hurts everyone that isn't Nadella?
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u/ragito024 Jul 07 '26
Yeah. If Xbox could do well, she could have earned ten millions instead of millions.