New-ish Xbox CEO Asha Sharma has had a busy first six months on the job, including killing the divisive “This is Xbox” marketing campaign, slashing Xbox Game Pass Ultimate’s subscription price, and unfortunately also overseeing mass layoffs and development studio spin-outs. But as Sharma has gotten settled in her job, she’s also been spending time understanding Xbox’s products and customers in another way: by fielding customer support tickets.
In a new profile on her personal and business background in The Wall Street Journal (with a hat tip to TweakTown), the paper learned a lot about Xbox’s new CEO – including how, “To better understand players, she spends a few hours each month responding to customer support tickets, during which she’s learned how complex it can be to fix a single player’s problem.” So there’s a nonzero chance that if you’ve filed a customer support ticket with Xbox over the past six months, the CEO herself has personally addressed it.
Sharma recently told her studios to focus on Xbox’s underserved core franchises, which has included one move most fans seem united in their delight about: Fallout New Vegas developer Obsidian Entertainment has begun work on a new Fallout RPG, to be directed by New Vegas creative boss and decorated RPG developer Josh Sawyer. I wrote about what the company’s franchise-first future might look like.
Just last week, meanwhile, Sharma landed a huge free agent, signing revered game director Hideo Kojima to a multi-project deal that expands the existing agreement to do the horror game OD to now also include the Metal Gear Solid spiritual successor Physint, which was originally a PlayStation exclusive but that planned to cancel earlier this summer.
