Xbox Game Pass gets "grim prognosis" from former PlayStation CEO, new Xbox head Asha Sharma tells him they should "chat sometime"

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Xbox Game Pass doesn't have many friends left. Once Microsoft made Game Pass Ultimate 50% more expensive in 2025, fans declared themselves betrayed, and even Xbox co-founder Laura Fryer was shocked by the company's apparent allegiance to "greed over gaming." Former Sony Interactive Entertainment America CEO Shawn Layden now thinks Xbox should just let the floundering subscription service die with dignity, but new Xbox lead Asha Sharma seems to want more time.

This tension between old and new gaming guards unfolded as a LinkedIn drama, as it was always destined to. Layden commented on a post by games industry researcher (and friend of GamesRadar+) Joost van Dreunen sharing that Sharma, in a leaked memo to Xbox staff, agreed, "Game Pass has become too expensive for players." Layden's solution is to smother it with a pillow.

He says about Xbox, proliferating the metaphor, "They are trying so hard to will this into health, despite unfavorable diagnostics and a grim prognosis. A clarifying post mortem would do the entire industry some good."

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Former PlayStation head of strategy and development Gabriel Pessah adds, "I second that."

Then Sharma replies two days later, "I would love to chat sometime." It's her first LinkedIn comment in four months, which doesn't necessarily reveal the urgency or tone of her offer – maybe she just forgot her password three-and-a-half months ago – but it does suggest the Xbox lead and games industry newbie is serious about veterans' opinions.

And that, I think, is a good thing for consumers yearning for a time when life was simple and the Xbox Series X wasn't $650. In the leaked memo from Sharma to Xbox employees, the CEO acknowledged this, as she said about Game Pass, "We need a better value equation. Long term, we will evolve Game Pass into a more flexible system which will take time to test and learn around."

It remains to be seen, in a time when life is complicated and everything is an Xbox, if Game Pass is even worth a makeover. But it seems Sharma is going to find out.

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Ashley BardhanSenior Writer

Ashley is a Senior Writer at GamesRadar+. She's been a staff writer at Kotaku and Inverse, too, and she's written freelance pieces about horror and women in games for sites like Rolling Stone, Vulture, IGN, and Polygon. When she's not covering gaming news, she's usually working on expanding her doll collection while watching Saw movies one through 11.

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