For EW’s first gaming cover in more than two decades, key members of Xbox dive into their new era of play, upcoming movie and TV adaptations, and a brand reset.

Out of the (X)box: At 25, the gaming giant seeks to level up with new ways of play and Hollywood adaptations

For EW's first gaming cover in more than two decades, key members of Xbox dive into their new era of play, upcoming movie and TV adaptations, and a brand reset.

By Nick Romano

Nick Romano

Nick Romano is a senior editor at ** with 15 years of journalism experience covering entertainment. His work previously appeared in Vanity Fair, Vulture, IGN, and more.

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June 22, 2026 12:00 p.m. ET

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Among the red seats of the David Geffen Theater, the atmosphere crackles with anticipation and a touch of anxiety.

It's early June at the Xbox Showcase, the annual event in which the gaming giant previews upcoming titles and news for the masses. Internally, the festivities are described as their Super Bowl. The room itself — inside Los Angeles' Academy Museum of Motion Pictures — is filled with a mix of press, influencers, the makers of the presented games, and enthusiastic players. But millions more monitor the livestream from afar, eagerly awaiting the next big announcements.

The Showcase arrives just five days after PlayStation's latest State of Play, a similar event focused entirely on Xbox's longtime friendly rival in the console wars. At the end of 2025, Xbox hardware sales dramatically trailed the Sony-owned PlayStation 5 and its covetous exclusives like *God of War*, *Marvel's Spider-Man*, and *Ghost of Tsushima*/*Yōtei*. That meant Xbox was trailing both PlayStation and Nintendo (whose Switch reigned as current king of the consoles). It was time to change the conversation.

As the Showcase countdown clock on the stage's jumbo screen punches down to kickoff, one developer on the Halo Studios team — about to reveal more of *Halo: Campaign Evolved* (July 28), that franchise's full remake of the game that started it all — remarks to a colleague how stressed he is. The feeling isn't unwarranted. Those sporting badges with the phrase "fan" on it have no issues with voicing their opinions live in the room, in front of the creators themselves.

"Let's watch some trailers," one cheeky attendee exclaims before the presentation begins.

Asha Sharma, the newly minted CEO of Xbox who was listening to the room from backstage, wasn't expecting the crowd to be so vocal.

"It's one thing to hear about Showcase, it's another thing to watch it, and then it's something completely indescribable to feel," Sharma tells ** in the aftermath of the presentation. "I've never worked on a product that had this much impact on people's core identity, their lives, their stories. So, honestly, it was overwhelming in a really good way, in that you just feel the responsibility and purpose and joy. I'm actually an introvert, so all of this is a lot to process."

Matt Booty — who has been rising up the ranks at Microsoft since he joined the company in 2010, and was promoted this year to Xbox's executive vice president and chief content offficer — acknowledges you can't anticipate how an audience is going to respond.

"You start getting nervous, getting in your head," he describes. "So when I'm in there and you hear the reactions, it makes me proud of our teams. And our teams love it. They work so hard for our fans and our players, and it's just energy back to them."

Inside the room, the Xbox Showcase felt like a victory lap for Sharma and Booty, but especially Sharma, who was welcomed on stage like a rock star, sporting a black, custom-made bomber jacket emblazoned with the brand's signature X — the green trim of her white Adidas sneaks another homage to the monolith she now leads.

Sound check at the Xbox Showcase with Matt Booty and Asha Sharma.

Unlike past Showcases, this year's event coincided with a massive moment of change at Xbox. As the brand celebrates 25 years, Sharma has big plans to transform the entire division. At first, some thought of her as a prophesied herald of the end, if the social media backlash were to be believed. One tweet summing up the most common criticism of the Wisconsin-raised black belt in taekwondo labeled her "an AI executive with no background in gaming." In other words, this former non-gamer coming from Microsoft's AI space, InstaCart, and Meta was not exactly the expected choice.

Then Sharma hit the ground running, officially renaming Microsoft's gaming division back to Xbox, announcing a new controller and boot-up theme, touting Project Helix (the next big Xbox console), lowering the price of Game Pass (the streaming game service), confirming console exclusives like *Gears of War: E-Day* and *Clockwork Revolution*, and more — all in just her first 100 days. Now you're more likely to find Sharma Photoshopped on the internet as a Jesus-like savior.

"We had this discussion early on where a lot of people said, 'Hey, it's going to be a tough landing,'" Sharma recalls. "Since I've never had a public profile, let alone in gaming, I guess I just didn't know what to expect. So I think it's really hard to prepare for those moments, and then when it's happening, the only way out is through it."

But that path has proved a bit leaky.

Matt Booty and Asha Sharma on stage ahead of the 2026 Xbox Showcase.

Just a couple weeks out from the Showcase (and their interviews with EW), leaks began in the press about potential layoffs at Xbox. Sharma and Booty then jointly announced a "reset" in a memo to staff that they, in the spirit of transparency, made public directly on the brand's website. Among various points were mentions of a decline in annual revenue, the "hardware component crisis" (the still-rising inflation of console storage component costs), and how they "overextended" as they executed on changing strategies.

Amid various reports and online rumblings of entire studio closures, Xbox has not officially commented on the matter. Sources tell EW that restructuring plans are still being finalized. Leadership aims to exhaust all other options before making these decisions, and Xbox will update teams once details are solidified.

When Sharma speaks with EW prior to the "reset" announcement, she's direct and matter-of-fact about the issues ahead.

"Technology companies are going through this, entertainment companies are going through this, and certainly gaming is not immune to it,” she says. “When COVID hit, all the demand came forward at the same time that AI happened. The whole industry is in a time of change…. In a couple of weeks, I'll share some numbers with our team and we can share some numbers with you, too, on the state of Xbox and the work ahead for us — and how we're going to make sure that we are a stronger business on the other side."

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Sharma's vision is to turn Xbox into not just the biggest gaming company, but the biggest *entertainment* company. That includes expanding their imprint in Hollywood by piggybacking off the success of *A Minecraft Movie* and *Fallout* with numerous other movie and TV adaptations in the works. The main goal, though, remains making Xbox the go-to destination for "play."

"The next generation, their No. 1 form of entertainment is play," Sharma says. "It's not about what we say, it is about what the world does, and they're deciding that gaming is one of the most important forms of entertainment today — and the next generation is saying it is *the* most important form of entertainment. So we will continue to meet players where they are."

Hollywood levels up on Xbox games

Jill Braff, James Altman, Matt Booty, Asha Sharma, and Jonathan Nolan look at robot Mr. Handy for 'Fallout' season 3.

Of the dozen-plus members of Xbox's extended family network that spoke with EW, most can remember a time when gaming adaptations were considered Hollywood's bastard children. Mark Grigsby — who, alongside Jack O'Hara, is co-head of Infinity Ward, one of a few studios that make *Call of Duty* games for Microsoft — remembers watching the 1994 *Street Fighter* movie as a kid.

"I was so upset, because I loved that franchise," he remarks of the Jean-Claude Van Damme-led flop. "I'm really excited about the one that's coming out now." (Paramount will release a reboot starring Noah Centineo in theaters this Oct. 16.)

And with a live-action *Call of Duty* movie coming from writer Taylor Sheridan (of the *Yellowstone*-verse) and director Peter Berg (*Lone Survivor*, *Deep Water Horizon*) in 2028, Grigsby comments, "I love movies. I love video games. The fact that I'm working on a franchise that is working on a movie now is one of my greatest dreams."

Booty attributes Hollywood's new focus on adapting games to the medium's place in pop culture. According to the Entertainment Software Association, U.S. consumers spent $60.7 billion on video games in 2025, significantly higher than the $8.87 billion Americans collectively spent to see movies during the same period. And in terms of what they're watching, *The Super Mario Galaxy Movie*, based on the Nintendo classic, is currently the top movie of the year, six months into 2026.

Booty also points to the swath of Hollywood filmmakers and writers who grew up on games and now want to adapt them, as well as the higher substance of video games themselves 25 years after the launch of Xbox.

"There has been an appreciation for the game creators as artists," Booty says. "We've come a long way from 'red pixel shoots a blue pixel.' We're actually telling stories and having a social impact and importantly creating worlds and fiction that are extensible."

'Fallout' EP Jonathan Nolan shows Asha Sharma and Matt Booty season 3 production designs.

There's no one seen as more prolific in this regard than Hideo Kojima. The Japanese creator behind *Metal Gear Solid* has a different approach to adaptations. A member of the Xbox family through a partnership on his upcoming horror experience, *OD*, Kojima is adapting one of his more recent projects, *Death Stranding*, into what he describes as "a two-hour art movie" with director Michael Sarnoski (*A Quiet Place: Day One*) instead of a strict adaptation of the Norman Reedus-led title.

"For a movie adaptation, I wanted to try a different path," he teases. "I don't know if this will be successful, but that's the goal."

While the *Death Stranding* film isn't under the Microsoft umbrella, the company now has more than a dozen movie and TV titles of their own in various stages of development, EW has learned. Two of them are already proven hits.

*A Minecraft Movie*, inspired by the massively popular sandbox game from Mojang Studios, became the fifth highest-grossing movie of 2025 worldwide. *Fallout*, adapted from Bethesda's wildly popular world of Vault dwellers, is the second most-watched TV series on Amazon after concluding its second season this past February.

Speaking in late May from New Zealand, director Jared Hess is now four weeks into filming his *Minecraft* sequel, titled *A Minecraft Movie Squared*. Kirsten Dunst joins the cast as Alex, the primary female avatar of the game, alongside Jack Black, Jason Momoa, Danielle Brooks, Matt Berry, and more.

Jonathan Nolan and Todd Howard on set of 'Fallout' season 2, puppeteering the Deathclaw animatronic.

"Alex is such an important character in the *Minecraft* world that we want to make sure she's represented in the movie and she has a great part," says Kayleen Walters, the head of Mojang Studios and an executive producer on the movie.

Hess calls the sequel "much more ambitious," noting that, "we're bouncing all over the place to so many really, really unique locations. It's bigger, it's crazier, it's funnier."

The first teaser poster also revealed twin axes glowing purple, and the filmmaker confirms what fans think it means: the introduction of enchanted items to the film franchise.

"We're taking Steve and Alex and going on this epic mission back into the Overworld," he says. "We're definitely expanding their abilities and things that they have to do to get the job done."

Over in the *Fallout* region, Amazon is moving swiftly ahead on season 3, with Aaron Paul —"a *Fallout* fan from way back," per Todd Howard, the head of Bethesda Game Studios — now joining the cast alongside Ella Purnell, Walton Goggins, Aaron Moten, Emily Mortimer, Manny Jacinto, and Thomasin McKenzie. Howard confirms pre-production is underway and season 3 "is gonna start shooting soon."

"We talked about this at the end of season 2, hinting we're going to new places," he says. "So one of the things that we all love about *Fallout* is the geography of the world and being able to show some new things in the *Fallout* world that I think will surprise people, that they've never seen before in the games."

As for those new adaptations, Booty & co. provide some key updates, while keeping others a mystery for now.

'Gears of War: E-Day'.

Courtesy of XBOX

Netflix announced a live-action *Gears of War* movie from director David Leitch (*The Fall Guy*, *Bullet Train*) and writer Jon Spaihts (*Dune: Part III*). EW can exclusively reveal that the film will tell "the origin story of Delta Squad, a ragtag crew of soldiers who wage a desperate war for survival against the Locust, a race of subterranean creatures set on destroying humanity," according to an official description.

"The game really is about the bonds between teams. It's about brotherhood at its core," Booty says. "When you go visit the studio, their tagline is 'Never Fight Alone.' So when you think about that for a dramatic narrative, it's a pretty good starting point."

EW can also report that *Sea of Thieves* will be developed into a live-action movie. Marvel filmmaker Destin Daniel Cretton (*Spider-Man: Brand New Day*, *Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings*) will produce through his company, Hisako Films. A director is not yet attached.

"The main character of a *Sea of Thieves* game is actually the player and the community," Booty explains. "So if you sit down to think about *Sea of Thieves*, it's not, *Who are the main characters?* *What's the plot?* It's a super social game, but there's a tone to *Sea of Thieves*. It's built on a very cooperative community, so you can start to sense what that's going to be like."

Other known adaptations include animated series based on *Gears of War* and *Minecraft* (both at Netflix), a live-action *Wolfenstein* show at Amazon, and a *Fallout Shelter* reality competition (now filming).

James Altman, Matt Booty, Asha Sharma, Jonathan Nolan, Jill Braff, and Athena Wickham discuss 'Fallout Shelter'.

The previous *Halo* adaptation at Paramount+ didn't make it past season 2, but the series shot to the top of the charts when Netflix picked up its streaming distribution. Could it come back?

"*Halo*, first and foremost, is one of our biggest franchises," Booty more generally comments on the property. "It's iconic to Xbox and we're certainly going to invest going forward."

As for the rest of the titles that make up the over a dozen adaptations in the works, Xbox isn't quite ready to talk about them. But will they say anything about a possible animated *Candy Crush *movie?

"I think it'd be super fun,” says Todd Green, the head of *Candy Crush* owner King, another jewel under the Xbox umbrella. "We do have a rich cast of characters and there's something very distinctive both tonally in the experience and visually about *Candy Crush*. What we're trying to do is explore the boundaries beyond the games."

"We've got over 20 franchises that have made a billion dollars, lifetime," Booty recognizes of the games under their umbrella. "I feel a lot of responsibility to shepherd that. We're the stewards of that IP. We're not the owners, because really, the communities own those."

Sharma clarifies, "You won't see us try to become the biggest linear provider in the world or anything like that, but I think great games are culture, and culture is entertainment. If you think about it, we've got the number two show of all time on Amazon [*Fallout*], *Minecraft* was top 5 in 2025, *Call of Duty* is bigger than the Marvel Cinematic Universe. So it all measures. [There's] more appetite to work with us on titles than ever before."

'Halo: Campaign Evolved'.

Courtesy of XBOX

In order to wrap her head around this current moment for gaming, Sharma needed to look to the past 25 years of Xbox.

That history manifests in the Microsoft Archives, a building situated on the brand's campus in Redmond, Wash., just outside of Seattle and down the street from Nintendo HQ. Part museum, part database, the Archives contains everything from a 1978 memo about the first photograph of Microsoft employees, to early Xbox consoles, to costumes from the *Halo* TV series.

With her official announcement as CEO in February, Sharma decided her first job was to listen and learn about Xbox's past and what made the brand what it is today. Here's what she found.

"I'm learning a lot about the brilliance of our artists and what it takes to make a game — and not just a game that is beautiful, but a game that is just so deep with characters and worlds and has potential to invite millions, if not tens of millions of players," she says. "We live in a world where almost every company is trying to automate the economy, and it's really amazing to see what we're doing. It's deeply human. It's art over science, but it is incredible execution in order to actually consistently deliver great hits."

The Twisted Warden, a new foe players will face in 'Minecraft: Dungeons II'.

Courtesy of XBOX

Those hits keep coming. As of this story’s publishing, Mojang has sold more than 400 million copies of *Minecraft*, securing its status as the best-selling video game of all time. This year will see the release of the franchise's latest offshoot, *Minecraft: Dungeons II*, the sequel to the 2020 dungeon-crawler spin on the traditional offering.

"The first one came out and it was like a little surprise success," Walters says. "We realized that people want to play *Minecraft* in different ways. If you play 'Vanilla'" — a nickname for the original *Minecraft* — "you don't play combat. But if you like combat, you go play *Dungeons*."

Plenty of other games are waiting in the wings, including *Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4* (Oct. 23) and the sprawling fantasy world of *Fable* (Feb. 23, 2027) — both of which include notable actors from the Hollywood sphere.

Young Mazino — who broke out in Netflix's *Beef* and HBO's *The Last of Us* — portrays Private Park, a young South Korean soldier in *Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4*, alongside the returning Barry Sloane (*Revenge*, *House of the Dragon*) as main protagonist Captain John Price.

"We had a range of cast auditions for Park in general, and Young wasn't my first pick," Grigsby admits. "But seeing him on [the performance capture] stage and the different takes that he would do, I was wrong. This was the right choice."

'Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4'.

Story is key to how a game like the new *Call of Duty* keeps gaming at the forefront of entertainment. In this new entry, the franchise goes to a South Korean setting for the first time, imagining a war with North Korea and the different character perspectives.

"We really care about it feeling like it's ripped from the headlines," O'Hara says. "With something that hasn't happened, it's very important it feels like it could — then really leaning into the characters that are experiencing those events. That's the most important part for the [Infinity Ward] version of *Call of Duty*."

The Xbox Showcase previewed a slew of other games coming later this year and next, but a few remained mysteries.

*Elder Scrolls VI*, the latest installment of the *Skyrim* saga, still ranks high in terms of most-anticipated titles. Howard says it's "our biggest project right now" at Bethesda.

"That's what the majority of the studio is on," he adds. "We know we need to get it right and it's been a long time."

Another is *Marvel's Blade*, the game based on the half-vampire Daywalker from the comics, made famous by Wesley Snipes' rendition on the big screen.

"I'm not at liberty to say when [we'll see more]," Howard teases, "but I saw some stuff just yesterday [on May 21] and the folks at Arkane [Studios, the developers] are doing a really, really great job."

What Kojima is doing with *OD*, however, feels like a league of its own.

Kojima Productions

Sophia Lillis (*Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves*), Hunter Schafer (*Euphoria*), and the late Udo Kier (*Flesh for Frankenstein*) represent the three main characters in Kojima's *OD*, a new kind of horror game made in collaboration with Jordan Peele, the Oscar-winning filmmaker behind *Get Out*.

A scan was completed of Kier prior to the actor's death in November 2025, but the team couldn't make an actual shoot happen in time. Kojima Productions declines to share more information on Kier's involvement, though filming has now properly begun with the actors on *OD*.

It's difficult, even now, for Kojima to talk about what the game is without giving it away, but the title speaks to the concept, which is to get the player to overdose on fear.

"I wanted to do something new. I wanted to do something different," he says. "I had this *OD* concept since I was working on *DS1* [*Death Stranding*] and I was working on it just by myself. I can't reveal much detail, but it's something that no one has ever seen before. A new game system."

Details on the concept remain top secret, but it's clearly ambitious and potentially revolutionary.

"I pitched to many people, to the big companies, and also to the up-and-coming companies. All of them said the same thing," Kojima recalls. "They said that I'm crazy, and that they really don't understand the concept — that they will not be able to do it."

It was Phil Spencer, the former Xbox CEO and friend of the creator, who understood what he was trying to achieve. So does Sharma, who calls it a "deeply moving game. I've got great artists and creatives that can pick a great game better than I can, and so I want to give it space, but most importantly, I think it just represents another kind of game."'

Kojima expertly teases, "I wanted to go beyond the limit of the 'scariness' that other games had reached. It's a single-player game, and I wanted to make it as scary as possible. But for those that might stop playing when it gets too scary, I have thought of a system that will allow them to keep going. I can't say much more, because it'll give too much of a hint on the system, and I could get in trouble for saying too much!"

A game like *OD* tells Sharma that Xbox has "not reached the boundary of games," she says, "and, therefore, we need to make sure our platform is sufficiently open so more creators and developers can come on board and be successful, because the next Kojima is yet to be known."

'Candy Crush Saga' x 'Fallout'.

Silvia Toma, Lead Artist

Moving forward, she plans for Xbox to have "a more open ecosystem to invite more developers, to have more types of games, to invite more players." But she's also thinking about different ways of play.

There are plenty of people out there that don't consider themselves gamers, but, for example, spend endless hours leveling up on *Candy Crush*.

"The thing that we've been trying to do the most here is to treat everybody — whether they describe themselves as a gamer or not — [as important]. We try to have a very mainstream product," Green says.

*Candy Crush*, which plans to release an album that reimagines some of gaming's most iconic soundtracks later this year, feels important for Xbox's bigger picture.

Back at the Showcase, as Sharma sits in a room backstage after the presentation, she explains how "gaming is unaffordable in many cases, in terms of how we've traditionally thought about it." It’s not just because of the hardware crisis, but also, she says, "because of the attention economy and competing subscriptions."

*Candy Crush*, in that regard, feels more accessible.

"It's a really hard formula," Sharma remarks. "It's a really challenging business, but I think it's a really special business."

'Candy Crush Saga' x 'Halo'.

Silvia Toma, Lead Artist

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As she charts the road ahead, Sharma knows it will be difficult and sacrifices will have to be made, but it's all serving the larger mission to make Xbox bigger than ever. How does a self-described introvert shrug off the weight of that responsibility at the end of the day?

"I go for a walk. I did a walk right in between Showcase and this [interview]," she says. "I FaceTime my kids and I just try to get back in touch with the most core part of who I am."

Juggling her private and public personas has been an adjustment for the newly christened CEO: "I've never really been out there. I've always been the number two. The only three-letter word I aspired to was 'mom,' so it's been a really big change."

And at the company she now leads, the changes are only starting.

Original Article on Source

Source: “EW Gaming”