Xbox CEO Asha Sharma has pushed back on speculation that Microsoft could spin off its games division, telling the New York Times: “Xbox is not for sale.”
“We will do whatever it takes to set the company up for success, and we will look at the right partnerships, the right operating model and everything needed to achieve that,” Sharma added.
The denial comes despite growing speculation that Xbox could eventually be spun out as its own business, staying close to Microsoft through a partnership rather than sitting on its balance sheet.
According to the NYT, Xbox now accounts for around 6% of Microsoft’s total profits.
Sharma took over Xbox in February with no prior video game industry experience, having previously served as president of Microsoft’s CoreAI division and chief operating officer at Instacart.
Her time in charge has been defined by cuts: Xbox shed a fifth of its staff this summer alone and shut down or sold off five studios in the process, with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella since praising the “streamlining” as part of a push toward what he called a “sustainable business model” for the division.
The restructuring has continued since, with Microsoft transferring Rare and the Halo franchise to Activision, proposing the closure of Ninja Theory, and cutting a further 268 roles last week.
Game Pass hasn’t hit its targets either: subscriber numbers peaked at 34 million before starting to drop, and Microsoft has pulled back from putting new Call of Duty games straight onto the service, worried it was eating into standalone sales. Sharma says Xbox retains 500 million monthly players and wants to expand into Africa, Latin America and South Asia via cloud gaming.