‘Xbox is not for sale’ says Microsoft’s gaming chief

Xbox CEO Asha Sharma has denied reports that Microsoft is considering selling off its Xbox business. The Information reported in June that Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and CFO Amy Hood had been considering spinning out Xbox entirely, and then reported earlier this month that both execs have “more recently supported Sharma’s plans to overhaul the unit.”

“Xbox is not for sale,” says Sharma in an interview with The New York Times. “We will do whatever it takes to set the company up for success, and we will look at the right partnerships, the right operating model and everything needed to achieve that.”

It appears that Nadella and Hood have favored the giant Xbox “reset” as the plan for Microsoft’s gaming unit instead of making Xbox a joint venture or spinning out the gaming business entirely. Sharma announced her Xbox restructuring in June, calling it a reset for the division. Microsoft is planning to lay off up to 3,200 Xbox employees over the course of its 2027 financial year, which ends in June.

Nadella backed Sharma’s restructuring and layoffs in a recent appearance on the Sources podcast. “There’s some amount of streamlining the team is doing, and Asha is doing, which is great to see,” said Nadella last week. “And then we have to invent the right sustainable business model that allows us to deliver gaming to more and more people.”

The most recent restructuring has seen Halo move under Activision, as well as the developers behind Sea of Thieves and Age of Empires. Alongside a major shake-up of Xbox Game Studios, the recent changes look geared toward making Xbox a wholly owned subsidiary like Microsoft does with LinkedIn.

Microsoft is reducing management layers at Xbox, offloading smaller studios, and focusing on its larger Xbox franchises. That could eventually end in an Xbox sale at some point in the future, but right now the plan seems to be about bringing growth back to Xbox. “We’ve got a long way to go with Microsoft,” says Sharma, “and we’re going to take the long-term view.”

But as Sharma said in February, “The plan’s the plan until it’s not the plan.”