Nilay Patel

Here we go.

Tom Warren, you're a senior reporter at The Verge.

You are currently out on paternity leave, but Microsoft just brought you back.

It's just punishment for all of the scoops you have dropped on the company over the years.

So this week, as you were playing with your beautiful new baby, Microsoft initiated a major shakeup at Xbox, something we've seen coming for a little bit, but maybe not on this scale or this magnitude.

Describe what happened at Xbox this week.

And this is, I think, the shakeup, right?

We knew Phil was going to retire.

He'd been messaging that for some time.

He's been there for a long time.

He's a Microsoft lifer, really.

Phil's been on this show before.

We're going to run some clips from his past interviews on Decoder because I want to get your take on what happened between those interviews and now.

But at just a very high level, we knew Phil was going.

Is it that everyone expected Sarah to be his successor and that didn't happen and that's the surprise here?

I want to come to Asha and the new leadership and particularly sort of the Microsoft AI of it all because that seems like an important piece of the puzzle.

I just want to stick with Phil and Sarah for one more second.

There's the reporting you have done about Sarah personally and her skills as a manager and potentially CEO.

And then there's Phil and the strategy he pursued for Xbox and Microsoft Gaming.

And a huge part of that strategy is making Microsoft Gaming as big as it is, bigger than Xbox.