Tom Warren

Yep.

This happens every time I take a vacation or leave.

Microsoft decides we're going to do something massive and ruin Tom's life.

Phil Spencer, the longtime CEO of Microsoft Gaming, technically, but Xbox chief is what he's known as.

He's retiring, so he's leaving Microsoft.

Sarah Bond, the Xbox president, is also leaving Microsoft.

And then they're actually promoting Asha Sharma, who used to be on the core AI side at Microsoft, to the CEO of Microsoft Gaming, so replacing Phil Spencer, essentially.

So, yeah, big news, a big shake-up, should we say, of Xbox, which I think has been, I think with Phil Spencer, it's been a long time coming, right?

I think Xbox fans have expected that retirement, but perhaps not so much Sarah Bond leaving, so...

I think there's two surprises, right?

It's obviously that Sarah wasn't named Xbox chief and that Asher was the successor because that just wasn't... Yeah, that was a quiet surprise and a surprise hire, really.

But yeah, so Sarah has always been the sort of number two.

She's always travelled with Phil and always been kind of like the face of Xbox over the past couple of years as Phil's kind of...

I say he's stepped back a little bit since the Activision Blizzard acquisition a little bit publicly.

But yes, so Sarah has kind of become the face of Xbox during that time.

And she took over the platform work, the hardware work.

So whenever there was any mention of like the next gen Xbox, it was Sarah that would come out and talk about it and not Phil.

So that's a change in itself, right?

Because it's usually Phil.

So I think everyone just kind of thought, okay, well, she's been prepped to be Phil's replacement eventually, whether it be a couple of years, five years, whatever.