Right now, it is too hard to ship impact quickly. We spend too much time inward instead of with the community, and we lack the depth we need in some of the fundamentals.
Jared Palmer, who has been CoreAI vice president of product and a senior vice president of Microsoft’s GitHub subsidiary, will join Xbox as a member of technical staff to work on product, engineering, developer tools and infrastructure. He will also pay attention to matters of “taste,” Sharma wrote. Palmer came to Microsoft in October after a stint as vice president of artificial intelligence app hosting service Vercel, which bought his startup Turborepo in 2021.
Tim Allen, a CoreAI vice president of design and GitHub’s senior vice president of design and research, will also go to Xbox and will lead design. Allen arrived at Microsoft in November after spending almost four years as head of design and research at Instacart.
Jonathan McKay, a former Meta director and head of growth for ChatGPT at OpenAI, will be Xbox’s head of growth after holding that title in the CoreAI group.
Evan Chaki, a general manager in CoreAI, will run a team of forward-deployed engineers that will look to simplify development and end repetitive work.
David Schloss, Instacart’s senior director of product and growth, will take charge of Xbox’s subscription and cloud business.
Kevin Gammill, a corporate vice president working on Xbox user experience, game development and publishing platforms, will leave his post. Roanne Sones, a corporate vice president for Xbox devices and ecosystem, will take a leave of absence after this summer and will later be an Xbox advisor. Sones and Gammill have each spent 24 years at Microsoft.
Excited to share that I’m joining @Xbox as VP, Engineering & Technical Advisor to CEO @asha_shar
— Jared Palmer (@jaredpalmer) May 5, 2026
I’ll be focused on building world-class tools, services, and experiences for developers and players across the Xbox ecosystem.
Grateful for the opportunity and excited to get to… pic.twitter.com/6SMsfLqlOD
Bringing in your own people is a classic move, it brings in a team you trust to oversee your vision and report back to you, and who can be your enforcers a bit - ensuring you’re not outnumbered in strategy meetings etc.
It’ll be interesting to see how it pans out - I’ve seen it go catastrophically wrong before, where the new team forces the vision at all costs and won’t listen to the experts and leads to a delayed release where they’re eventually shoved aside and the experts finish up, but I’ve also seen it go very well, where the new team provide expertise the department is missing and work with them to overcome challenges and listens to the subject matter experts on why certain things are the way they are.
No judgement, it’s precisely what you’d expect really - I’ve seen the odd person take over and be able to influence everyone to the point of not needing to bring people in, but that’s rare and they can end up being kinda sociopaths lol.
Interesting to see how it goes - I’m guessing all being from AI means the Xbox support hellhole in the UK isn’t going anywhere… shakes fist at infinite looping support chatbot Next time Gadget, next time!
To that note, what’s interesting to me is Jason being promoted (idk what you promote VP of next Gen to, but let’s go!!! The Beard grows with his power) and the verge makes it sound like Sarah (and I assume Phil) are still on in their special advisory roles. I wonder how long that actually lasts. A ceremonial send off at the June Showcase would be nice, but I’m now realizing with how slow the business world actually is (and probably the need for job security) it wouldn’t be surprising for them to stay on through the year.
Yep I mean for my level in the UK 3 months is stock, but specialist knowledge or getting more senior can mean up to 6 months notice - for their level 6 to 12 months is standard, I’d imagine it’s similar in the US
Xbox needs to move faster, deepen our connection with the community, and address friction for both players and developers.
— Asha (@asha_shar) May 5, 2026
Today, we promoted leaders who helped build Xbox, while also bringing in new voices to help push us forward. This balance is important as we get the business…
Satya maybe:
At first I was like…she’s all talk (probably, let’s wait and see) but man, she is not sitting still and is changing stuff drastically that i can’t really think that anymore.
It’s good to see stuff is being done and now let’s hope it’s for the better.
I’m amazed that she can remove the unnecessary production like copilot under the same company. I really wonder how much freedom she has currently.
Copilot is also being scaled back on Windows according to some updates / reports, and many Office features are starting to be more for 365 subscriptions and corporate.
Think this is possible as it’s the way the wind is blowing - AI isn’t proving to be the money maker many predicted yet, so while Google and Meta have to go even harder due to less corporate access, Microsoft is likely pivoting harder to corporate usage, given they have easy access.
At my employer, we’ve recently had Foundry and AI specialists from Microsoft reach out to us and offer fortnightly catch ups to go over use cases and offer support - and Microsoft has been pushing Copilot Enterprise hard to all companies as it segregates data to prevent ISO compliance breaches.
My reading on their behaviour is they know where the money lies and follow it, minimising consumer use until it’s further along and more able to earn money - and let others lose tons trying to find any way of squeezing cash out of the public who are all struggling
Excited to welcome new leaders to @Xbox!
— Jason Ronald (@jronald) May 5, 2026
Combining deep experience in gaming with new strengths and perspectives is a key part of how we continue evolving Xbox to be better for players and developers. LFG! #TeamXbox
Oh the news changed. Thank God. Copilot on Xbox was always dumb. As in just useless. If it could do something like help me build a map in forge or overwatch map builder with just prompts then I’d be interested. As is it just continues to be a worse search (and Copilot is wrkng far too often). Now can we replace that tab on the mobile app with XBOX Wire??? Please!
Xbox needs to move faster, deepen our connection with the community, and address friction for both players and developers.
— Asha (@asha_shar) May 5, 2026
Today, we promoted leaders who helped build Xbox, while also bringing in new voices to help push us forward. This balance is important as we get the business…
You would think this is what people expected from her but opposite happened instead.
I’ve been telling people she wasn’t brought in to force AI into Xbox. People just saw she worked on AI and ignored the rest of her resume.
sounds like Copilot is gonna be removed from a bunch of places at Microsoft, because it’s fair to say it hasn’t lived up to its promise in many areas https://t.co/tO1qfxX7Lw
— Tom Warren (@tomwarren) May 5, 2026
I’ll give MS this. They know something isn’t working and don’t double down on it. Mostly. Bottom line, the one that isn’t working is being taken care of, especially in gaming space.
They should’ve just supercharged Cortana. Copilot is also just not an interesting name.
Double edged sword, this impacts things we like too. I don’t think anyone is going to be lamenting over how MS should have given Copilot more of a chance though.
Agreed for Xbox it should’ve been Cortana, but outside of that Copilot is annoyingly quite a good name lol.
It makes you the captain of the plane, making the decisions and being in the driving seat, with it as your copilot helping you out and doing what it’s told but can also bring the plane to land.
It immediately makes you feel in charge and that it’s not out of control, but that it is competent and ready to help.
Obviously the reality can be somewhat lacking still lol, but given how they’ve introduced it so much into tools professionals use, the name kinda works…
(I had too much time during a boring meeting and could see the tab in Teams for it then a Gemini ad on the TV, initially thought that’s a cooler name then thought Copilot all the way through lol)
Yet more good moves
To me Copilot just sounds too generic. It’s just a noun. I don’t think of it as anything other than a general noun. Though I definitely just am not for any of the current tech names. I guess because it kinda just sounds like a discriptor. It doesn’t feel like a unique identity. Though I guess with like a decade I’d soften on it. I mean “X BOX”, “PLAY STATION”, “SWITCH”, none of these names are actually that unique but just eventually grow on you. They’re really all on the nose.