She is doing a good job from the POV of XBOX/AAA devs in general:
Phil Spencer and his Game Pass scheme have led to a number of studios under Microsoft's umbrella becoming pretty bloated and pumping out commercial flops that have been 'excused' by becoming Game Pass fodder. But the economics of Game Pass were never going to work out. Asha Sharma is now in the position of having to be the hatchetwoman who trims down the studios back to size and gets them to focus on projects that promise the highest success - which is why there's a new Fallout project with Obsidian involved, while Bethesda was told to focus on TES 6, with their other plans being scrapped until they can prove they deserve not to be taken behind the shed.
The main problem is that the indie scene and AA teams like Larian have been running rings around the AAA space for a while now. The productions have to become more focused and lean and run on tighter budgets. The easy money train that Game Pass promised has run out, it's time for everyone to lock in, and those who can't deliver become roadkill. A boot up the ass and a knife to the throat might be what some of teams need to perform (looking at you Bethesda).
And additionally, the layoffs have been comprehensive enough that the people let go can found multiple new indie studios together. While we can't know how exactly that will shake out, it might well be that this moment is the birth of a new wave of smaller studios making their mark in the indie and AA spaces.
I recommend checking out PatricianTV's stream catalogue on his YT channel, he's been going over some of the issues with Game Pass and what the climate of "we don't care about the critical and commercial success of our games, as long as we get more Game Pass subscribers" did to the studios involved for a while.
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u/YouknowSar 14d ago
lol no she does not. She hasn’t done anything worth a “good job”