Xbox CEO faces major backlash as she lands major White House advisory role
Xbox CEO Asha Sharma has a new role but gamers have been left feeling seriously confused.
Asha Sharma will co-lead the US Reserve’s Productivity and Jobs task force. As explained in a press release, the Federal Reserve has established five task forces which will be co-lead by external advisors, such as economists, business leaders and former central bank practitioners.
Sharma’s role means she will co-lead the Productivity and Jobs division with Marc Andreessen, co-founder and general partner at Andreessen Horowitz and Charles I. Jones, professor of economics at Stanford University.
This aim of the task force is to "assess the economic impact of new general-purpose technologies, including artificial intelligence, to inform the Federal Reserve's policy judgments."
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However Sharma’s new move comes following the announcement of significant layoffs at Xbox, with 3,200 positions set to be eliminated by the end of 2027.
In a statement shared on July 6, Sharma said, “We are beginning the most significant restructure in Xbox history. After careful consideration, I’ve made the difficult decision to reduce our team by approximately 3,200 throughout FY27. This will include approximately 1,600 role eliminations today, and in addition, four studios will leave XBOX to new management.”
While there was plenty of speculation in the past few weeks regarding the studios that Xbox would be letting go, the four that have either been closed or gone independent are Compulsion Games, Double Fine Productions, Ninja Theory, and Undead Lab.
She added: “These changes are about a bigger future for Xbox, not a smaller one. The next decade of gaming will be larger, more global, and more creative than anything we’ve seen before. This year, we’ll invest as much in Xbox as we ever have, but we’ll invest with greater focus, greater discipline, and greater clarity, all in service of making Xbox where the world plays and creates.”
Sharma succeeded Phil Spencer as Xbox CEO earlier this year after joining Microsoft in 2024 as president of CoreAI.
The timing of the announcement hasn’t gone unnoticed among Xbox fans. One person on X said: “Giving the CEO that JUST laid off 3000 people an advising position for the ‘productivity and jobs’ task force is nasty work lol.”
“Why does this feel like a bad thing,” someone else reacted to the news.
“Fairly certain this is a joke… a bad one.”
UNILAD Tech and approached the Federal Reserve and Xbox for comment.