Microsoft is making more leadership changes inside Xbox as new CEO Asha Sharma tries to reshape the gaming division. Sharma, who previously led Microsoft’s CoreAI products group, is bringing several CoreAI executives into key Xbox roles while some longtime Xbox leaders step away.

The move comes at a difficult time for Xbox. Microsoft’s latest Q3 earnings showed another revenue decline for the gaming division, marking the sixth straight quarter without growth. Sharma’s internal memo says Xbox needs to work differently, move faster, and spend more time with the community.

Xbox is getting new product, design, growth, and engineering leaders

Sharma says Xbox needs new leaders with consumer and technical experience. The new appointments come mostly from CoreAI and GitHub, which suggests Microsoft wants Xbox to become more product focused, faster moving, and more technically integrated with the rest of the company.

Jared Palmer is joining Xbox from CoreAI and GitHub, with a focus on product, engineering, developer tools, infrastructure, and what Sharma called “taste.” Tim Allen will lead design. Jonathan McKay, previously head of growth at OpenAI, will take a growth role at Xbox. Evan Chaki will lead an engineering team focused on reducing repeated work and simplifying development. David Schloss will handle Xbox subscriptions and cloud businesses.

At the same time, longtime Xbox executives Kevin Gammill and Roanne Sones are stepping down from their roles. Gammill worked across Xbox user experience, game development, and publishing platforms. Sones managed Xbox devices and ecosystem work.

This looks like more than a normal reshuffle. Sharma’s memo says Xbox has been too inward looking and too slow to ship impact. Bringing in leaders from CoreAI, GitHub, OpenAI, Vercel, and Instacart points to a push for faster product cycles, stronger growth thinking, and more modern developer infrastructure.

The risk is that Xbox also needs gaming specific judgment. AI and growth executives may help with tools, services, and platform speed, but Xbox’s problems are also about trust, first party games, hardware direction, pricing, Game Pass value, and communication with players.

Still, the direction is clear. Sharma is not only changing Xbox branding and pricing. She is changing who runs major parts of the business. The next test is whether these leadership changes produce visible improvements for players and developers, not only a different org chart.