In yesterday's big Xbox statement from Asha Sharma and Matt Booty, there was a mention in one of the priority sections about how they wanted to "stabilize Gen9 as a healthy and high-quality base", with Gen9 referring to the ninth generation of Xbox consoles in the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S.
When questioned about this in a follow-up interview by GameFile, Sharma explained that Xbox is "investing in [Gen9] as a first-class experience again", and that "we want to make sure that gameplay and the platform experience is excellent" across both systems.
Here are some exact quotes from the Xbox boss:
"We have formed a team [and] we’re investing in console features. We are standing up the muscle to make sure that all of our performance and reliability and quality is great. We are investing in it as a first-class experience again, and we want to make sure that all the players who want to be on Gen 9 are on Gen 9 with a great console with regular updates."
"I think that the Gen 9 is a great piece of hardware, and we want to make sure that gameplay and the platform experience is excellent. We know we just haven’t invested as much there and so we’re getting back to that."
As you can see, Sharma references her "team" that's investing in console features, which was established a few weeks ago and has already delivered a bunch of dashboard updates and achievement improvements already.
One area that Sharma seems less confident about is hardware sales though. When questioned about whether she expects Series X and S sales to rise again, she said she "can’t share guidance on what’s going to happen in general", and that the focus is on ensuring the entire Xbox division returns to growth in 2027. According to Sharma, the big question will be about player numbers — "how many players are playing every single day in the Xbox ecosystem?".
Regardless of what happens in terms of sales, it's great to know that the new Xbox boss wants to ensure we're getting amazing experiences as Series X and Series S owners, and she's certainly off to a good start with the new features.
We'll leave you with this as well — apparently, Sharma mentioned in a meeting at Microsoft yesterday that we'll be getting bi-weekly console updates throughout the rest of 2026!