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Back at the start of May, we were treated to the surprising news that Xbox was removing Microsoft CoPilot integration across the entire division, taking it away entirely from mobile and cancelling plans to integrate it into consoles.
Xbox had been showing off how CoPilot would work on Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S just a few weeks earlier, offering a help service where AI could step in to provide assistance when you were stuck in a game:
Speaking last night as part of Bloomberg Live, Xbox boss Asha Sharma admitted that Xbox's console players "aren't excited about that experience", and that it's her job to prioritise features that make sense for the brand.
"My job is to think about where we invest, what we prioritise and how we operate. Our console players aren't excited about that experience in their console."
"Now, do I believe in AI? Absolutely. I think neural rendering is a great opportunity for us to invest in that. It helps upscale, it helps the footprint on your device so you can get better graphics, there's a lot of things that AI can be really great at. I think we have to make sure it's solving a problem if we put it out there for gaming, and so I made that call."
Interestingly, she was then asked about what Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella thought of the decision - someone who has naturally championed CoPilot over the past year-or-so. Sharma didn't give an answer either way, but alluded to the CEO not necessarily being a big fan of it, but trusting her with making the best decision for Xbox.
"It was an Xbox decision. He's given me latitude to make the best decisions for our players."
From our perspective, we think the removal of CoPilot on Xbox is a great choice, as it never seemed to be a particularly popular feature and will likely have required significant investment. If Xbox can redirect that investment into features that truly make a major difference to console owners, that's surely only going to be a good thing.
It's telling that it's nowhere to be found on the Xbox Player Voice website as well. Nobody is requesting (in major numbers at least) for CoPilot to be revived, so it seems like Asha Sharma made an excellent call by ditching it for Xbox.