“Xbox is not for sale” says Microsoft’s gaming chief

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

Xbox CEO Asha Sharma is taking a ‘long-term view’ of Microsoft’s gaming division.

Xbox CEO Asha Sharma is taking a ‘long-term view’ of Microsoft’s gaming division.

by

Tom Warren

Sep 30, 2026, 4:24 PM UTC

Image: The Verge, Microsoft

Tom Warren

is a senior correspondent and author of

, who has been covering all things Microsoft, PC, and tech for over 20 years.

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

“Xbox is not for sale,” says Sharma in aninterview withThe 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. Sharma announced herXbox restructuringin June, calling it a reset for the division. Microsoft is planning to layoff up to 3,200 Xbox employees over the course of its 2027 financial year, which ends in June.

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• The Xbox reset gets ugly

Nadella backed Sharma’s restructuring and layoffs in a recent appearance on theSources 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 seenHalomove under Activision, as well as the developers behindSea of ThievesandAge of Empires. Alongside a major shake-up of Xbox Game Studios, the recent changes look geared towards making Xbox a wholly owned subsidiary like Microsoft does with LinkedIn.

Microsoft is reducing management layers at Microsoft, 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 Sharmasaid in February, “The plan’s the plan until it’s not the plan.”

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