TL;DR: Xbox CEO Asha Sharma personally spends hours monthly handling player support tickets to gather direct feedback, address ecosystem and hardware issues, and guide decisions-an approach tied to initiatives like Xbox Player Voice, recent exclusives, a disc-to-digital program, studio changes, layoffs, and a Kojima publishing deal.
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Xbox CEO Asha Sharma spends a few hours each month solving player support tickets to get direct feedback and guidance from dedicated users.
The Wall Street Journal recently profiled Xbox CEO Asha Sharma, revealing how the executive runs the business. While described as “intense,” Sharma has met players with a higher level of transparency and brought home realities like dwindling profit margins and rising costs. Her pragmatic approach has been swift, leading to lots of bad news like mass layoffs–drastic moves that set the stage for future growth.
In the profile, WSJ notes that Sharma spends hours every month responding to and answering/solving player support tickets. Sharma looks through the real problems that players are facing across Xbox, whether it be ecosystem-level or a specific game, or a friction point with hardware.
- Read more: Xbox has made progress expanding margins, new CEO says
This is likely related to the sentiment that drove Microsoft to launch the Xbox Player Voice website, which allows gamers to deliver direct feedback in a Reddit-like structure; popular, most-requested features are upvoted and listed higher up on the groupings. Microsoft has already met the top request–exclusivity–by revealing two Xbox-exclusive games for 2026 and 2027.
Despite having announced mass layoffs (Xbox apparently 1,250 more layoffs to go, per the WSJ), divesting studios, and cancelling projects, enthusiast sentiment around Sharma is favorable.
The return to exclusivity coupled with Xbox’s recent disc-to-digital program has garnered major praise, and Microsoft also just swooped in to sign a deal with Hideo Kojima to publish his new Metal Gear Solid successor, PHYSINT, after a deal with PlayStation fell through.
How does Xbox Player Voice work for submitting and upvoting feedback?
Xbox Player Voice lets gamers submit direct feedback about the Xbox ecosystem and the changes they want to see. Feedback is organized in a Reddit-like structure, and the most popular requests are upvoted so they appear higher in the groupings.
Question #2
What kinds of support tickets does Asha Sharma personally review most often?
How are player support tickets connected to changes in Xbox hardware and software?
Player support tickets are being used as a directel issues, individual games, and hardware friction points. That input appears to help guide changes to both software and hardware, and it lines up with Microsoft’s Player Voice program for collecting gamer feedback on what should change.
Question #4
What did Xbox reveal about its two exclusive games planned for 2026 and 2027?
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Sharma’s major test will be launching a next-gen games hardware product amid the current component crisis.
