executives

Microsoft gaming chief Phil Spencer steps down after 38 years with company

executives, gaming, microsoft, Phil Spencer, spencer, xbox, xbox series x / Kelly Newman / February 21, 2026

Microsoft Executive Vice President for Gaming Phil Spencer announced he will retire after 38 years at Microsoft and 12 years leading the company’s video game efforts. Asha Sharma, an executive currently in charge of Microsoft’s CoreAI division, will take his place.

Xbox President Sarah Bond, who many assumed was being groomed as Spencer’s eventual replacement, is also resigning from the company. Current Xbox Studios Head Matt Booty, meanwhile, is being promoted to Executive Vice President and Chief Content Officer and will work closely with Sharma.

In his departure note, Spencer said he told Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella last fall that he was “thinking about stepping back and starting the next chapter of my life.” Spencer will remain at Microsoft “in an advisory role” through the summer to help Sharma during the transition, he wrote.

Spencer, who got his start at Microsoft as an intern in 1988, served as a manager and executive at Microsoft Game Studios in 2003. In 2014, he took over as Head of Xbox, guiding the company through the aftermath of the troubled, Kinect-bundled launch of the Xbox One. More recently, he helped shepherd the company’s 2020 purchase of Bethesda Softworks and its $68.7 billion merger with Activision Blizzard, including the many regulatory battles that followed that latter announcement.

Meet the new boss

Sharma, who joined Microsoft just two years ago after stints at Meta and Instacart, promised in an introductory message to preside over “the return of Xbox,” and a “recommit[ment] to our core fans and players.” That commitment would “start with console which has shaped who we are,” but expand “across PC, mobile, and cloud,” Sharma wrote.

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Former Apple hardware chief Dan Riccio is retiring

Dan Riccio, one of Apple’s most prominent executives for more than two decades, will retire from the company this month, according to a report in Bloomberg that cites people with knowledge of the move.

Reportedly, Riccio has said he has been planning his retirement for the past five years, and his last day will be Friday, October 11.

Riccio began working at Apple in 1998, and by 2012, he had become the chief of hardware engineering. In that role, he oversaw several major hardware developments for Apple, including AirPods, the evolution of the modern iPhone, the iPad Pro, and more.

He held the title of senior vice president of hardware engineering during that time, then moved into a new role within the company in January of 2021. The public at first only knew that he was working on a “new project” at that time, but before long it became clear the project in question was what became the Vision Pro, Apple’s augmented-reality headset that launched this February.

The group that produced the Vision Pro is called the Vision Products Group within the company; that’s the 2,000-engineer-strong group Riccio has overseen since 2021. He was also involved in developing Project Titan, Apple’s smart car initiative that was eventually abandoned.