Things aren't great over at Xbox right now. Microsoft's games wing is undergoing substantial re-structuring right now, with ongoing layoffs planned to the tune of 3,200 jobs. As a result, Xbox CEO Asha Sharma's recent trip to Japan has drawn some ire from the former boss of a studio within the corporation.
Sharma visited Kojima Productions in Tokyo, both to check out the company and spend some time with Hideo Kojima himself. Photos of her time there were posted on the back of the announcement that one of the team's games, Physint, is now being published by Microsoft after it was dropped by Sony.
It's certainly a bit eyebrow-raising given the state of the neon green system right now, and a tenured developer has taken some time to say so.
"Super funny that Asha Sharma said 'Clarity is kindness' to the WSJ last week then did a half layoff today," Shannon Loftis, ex-studio head of Age of Empires developer World's Edge, writes in a Threads post. "I guess Damocles' Sword is a form of clarity, what do I know?"
Working day with @HIDEO_KOJIMA_EN and team on OD, PHYSINT and the future. https://t.co/RQFdMNtCIxSeptember 14, 2026
She's referring to this profile of Sharma from the Wall Street Journal, covering the Xbox head's philosophy towards handling redundancies and internal turmoil. Sharma lives by "clarity is kindness," delivering anything bad straight and to-the-point. There's something to not beating around the bush, I suppose, though it's probably hard to see any niceties when you're being told your job's at risk.
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