Xbox co-founder thinks Phil Spencer simply burned out trying to do right by games

Xbox co-founder Seamus Blackley thinks now-former Xbox boss Phil Spencer may have simply run out of steam trying to advocate for gaming inside Microsoft. But the person Blackley is most concerned about following the leadership shakeup is ex-president Sarah Bond, who resigned after nearly a decade with Xbox.

"The person who I feel worst for is Sarah Bond, who was more than capable from a leadership standpoint. Super cool, actual gamer."

Bond was long seen as Spencer's natural successor, but the job went to Asha Sharma – formerly president of Microsoft's CoreAI division, with no direct gaming background.

Blackley, who left Microsoft back in 2002, recalls that early Xbox leadership worked because it brought together different people with different experiences.

"It's never this balance of people that makes something work. The balance is what enables something to happen, but you need to have an idea that people drive through that remains pure somehow."

The situation with Sharma, he says, is different from those old internal power struggles: "This isn't an insurgency. This is kind of like, 'We're hoping that the new person who's been put in charge of our department, who doesn't have any background in what we do, will not fuck with us too much and will let us do the right thing.'"

With Sharma barely 48 hours into the role, speculation is about all anyone can offer. Still, one thing seems clear to Blackley:

"The game that Phil had been playing for a long time, managing the beast so that he could continue to try to do the right thing for games, I think that finally just wore him out."