Ben Lindbergh

for Bluepoint, unfortunately.

RIP.

Hope those people go on to do something else excellent, freed from the shackles of live service constraints.

But this is why I think live service development has kind of become the T-virus of video gaming.

This is why it just feels like everything's infected and we can't get away.

But before we talk about the T-virus, we have one more bit of news to discuss, which is a change at the top at Xbox.

Phil Spencer is out.

He is retiring.

He, of course, has led Microsoft's Xbox efforts since 2014, and he has been at Microsoft for close to 40 years.

So that alone is sort of a seismic change.

But you also have other changes.

Matt Booty, who was the head of content at Xbox, is being promoted to chief content officer.

He's sticking around.

But Sarah Bond, the former president, is out.

And there's been some post-changeover sniping in the press about her.

And the new head of Xbox gaming is Asha Sharma.

who most recently was running Microsoft's core AI efforts.

And that alone is enough to strike fear into the heart of some gamers.

She was at Instacart previously.

She did have a long-ago stint at Xbox, but...