Asha Sharma (아샤 샤르마), Microsoft’s newly appointed head of Xbox, is pursuing a new hardware and service strategy focused on revamping Game Pass to reduce its price burden and restoring a console-centric brand identity.

On April 16 local time, IT outlet The Verge reported that Sharma said in a recent internal memo that the current Game Pass has become too expensive for players. She stressed the need for a new value equation to improve it. She plans to move away from the existing single-model approach and evolve Game Pass into a flexible system tailored to different market conditions and user behaviour.

To that end, Sharma is reviewing plans to further segment Game Pass subscription tiers. Options under discussion include a cheaper tier containing only games from Microsoft’s own studios, or bundled products combining it with third-party services such as Netflix to expand the subscriber base. With heated internal debate over whether to include the Call of Duty series in Game Pass, another option under consideration is excluding future new releases from the Game Pass day-one lineup to manage costs.

A full reset is also under way in marketing and user experience. Sharma has halted the "This is an Xbox" advertising campaign, which had drawn criticism for clashing with Xbox’s identity, and instructed teams to refocus on the console device itself as the foundation of the brand. In line with that, engineering teams have started prioritising long-requested features, including disabling Quick Resume on a per-title basis, UI colour customisation and a cleaner guide interface.

Bold investment in technical foundations is also being pursued to support these user-experience improvements. The Xbox platform currently lacks an integrated code repository or a shared data foundation, creating a limitation in which service quality and development speed depend on individual developers’ capabilities rather than the system. Sharma plans to fundamentally strengthen engineering and data underpinnings to build an environment that provides a consistent user experience across console, PC and cloud. This is also an essential preparation step for the successful launch of the next-generation console, Project Helix.

Project Helix, the next-generation hardware, is being developed with the goal of running PC games and delivering overwhelming performance. A key challenge going forward is how to implement the flexible interface unique to existing Xbox consoles on a Windows-based system. Sharma signalled her intention to accelerate a connected experience in which finding friends and discovering games works smoothly even in a PC environment.

Sharma also reiterated the importance of accountability within the organisation and restoring customer trust. Referring to a recent incident in which controller batteries were omitted, she cited how the team promptly reorganised the factory line and prepared an apology and compensation measures. She said the top priority for every decision must be the player experience. Ultimately, these moves are seen as the opening signal of a full-scale strategic shift aimed at helping Xbox regain leadership in the gaming market.