Xbox CEO Asha Sharma has been personally responding to player support tickets

XBOX/Asha Sharma

A new Wall Street Journal profile of Xbox CEO Asha Sharma reveals she has been spending hours every month working through player support tickets herself, as a way of better understanding the problems facing Xbox users.

The details:

According to the WSJ, Sharma has been "personally responding" to support tickets, with the process helping her learn "how complex it can be to fix a single player's problem." The report frames it as a deliberate effort to stay close to the user experience at the top level of the business.
Sharma took over as Xbox CEO earlier this year, having previously served as president of Microsoft's CoreAI product division and as VP of Product and Engineering for Facebook Messenger and Instagram Direct.
Her tenure so far has been a mix of popular and painful decisions. On the positive side, she reversed some Game Pass pricing policies and made moves on exclusivity. On the other, she oversaw sweeping layoffs across Xbox — initially 1,600 jobs in July, expanding to 3,200 by the end of Microsoft's financial year — alongside the closure or sale of several studios including Ninja Theory, Undead Labs, Compulsion Games, and Double Fine.
Sharma has publicly acknowledged that despite over 200 million new players coming to Xbox and its games in FY26, "our business did not grow with our audience." She has said Xbox expects to return to growth by the end of FY27, which closes June 30, 2027.

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