Will Xbox's New CEO Kill Game Pass?

Industry staple Phil Spencer is moving on from Xbox. Megacorp Microsoft announced the Xbox CEO’s departure late last week. Heir apparent Sarah Bond revealed she would be moving on too. In their place is Asha Sharma is the new CEO of Xbox. She was previously the head of coreAI at Microsoft. In this episode of Day Zero, we discuss the ramifications of this move along with some community wisdom that’s probably done a better job of reading the room versus most (or even the official narrative). One of the points of discussion is deprioritising PC Game Pass and potentially Xbox Game Pass in itself given. Despite a strong slate of games and a rumoured new Xbox hardware next year, we may actually see Xbox being sold for parts or gutted completely.Before this, we discuss Sony’s scuppering of Bluepoint and how that it appears like an unwarranted move given that the company recently revealed its remaster plans for the God of War trilogy. And speaking of God of War, we also break down what we liked — and did not like — about God of War Sons of Sparta that was shadow dropped during the excellent State of Play earlier in the month.Day Zero is a podcast on video games featuring Rahul Majumdar and Rishi Alwani breaking down the bytes and bits behind the decisions that make and break the world's greatest entertainment industry.We’d love to hear your objectively bad takes. Let’s start a dialogue, preferably with enough branching paths favouring us.* Twitter/X - @RishiAlwani* Threads - @rishi.alwani* Instagram - @rishi.alwani* Twitter/X - @darthrahul* Threads - @darthrahul* Instagram - @darthrahul This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dayzeromedia.substack.com