Microsoft to invest more into Xbox than ever before, new CEO Asha Sharma tells employees

25 years after the first Xbox console released, Microsoft might be poised to invest more manpower and financial backing into the gaming brand than it ever has before.

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Xbox's new CEO Asha Sharma might have big plans for the flagging games division. The fresh-faced CEO began her tenure by reigniting hype around Xbox, revealing the ambitious Project Helix console-PC hybrid, scrapping the unpopular "this is an Xbox" marketing campaign, and making changes driven by fan feedback.

In a newly-leaked memo acquired by The Verge, Sharma seems to indicate that Microsoft is ready to "deeply invest" into Xbox beyond the current status quo. This could manifest in a more unified framework for developers and gamers alike, offering better access to content and potentially even facilitating faster product releases.

"It's clear that our ambitions require deeper investment in the Xbox platform foundations than we've made before. Today we operate across dozens of surfaces, pipelines, and release models without a shared code repository or common data foundation.

"As a result, quality and speed too often depends on heroics instead of systems. We also lack consistent infrastructure for experimentation, attribution, and learning, making it harder to know what's working and improve quickly.

"On the product side, our front end is a set of experiences built at different times, where discovery, relevance, and social are not first-class, and players have to work to find what to do next or who to play with."

How exactly this will work remains to be unseen, but Microsoft is clearly aiming to combine the best of both worlds with its Project Helix system, combining the power and flexibility of Xbox consoles with Windows PCs utilizing a common DirectX framework and operating system.

Microsoft could also be planning to add in some sort of mobile content integration into the Xbox ecosystem, with the potential added bonus of a robust ad-tech platform that delivers indirect monetization.