Xbox's first-ever chief operating officer, Helen Chiang, has left the company after being promoted to that role just a few months ago under CEO Asha Sharma. In this job, Chiang was assigned to oversee the profitability of Xbox, and it's been looking very bleak for Xbox lately.
Given the timing of her exit, people wondered about the circumstances, and that remains unclear. Sharma confirmed Chiang's departure in a memo to staff, seen by The Verge, saying she is grateful for Chiang's "years of service" at Xbox.
A spokesperson for Microsoft told Windows Central that the company does not "discuss individual personnel matters."
According to a source speaking to Eurogamer, Chiang was "terminated for policy violations." The Verge's Tom Warren backed this up, saying Chiang was cut loose due to a "policy violation," but the exact nature of that is unknown.
In July, Sharma announced that Chiang would become Xbox's first-ever COO, with "end-to-end" responsibility for the financial future of Xbox's content, hardware, platform, and services.
Chiang had worked at Microsoft for 20 years, in that time playing a key role in the creation of Xbox Live and later shepherding Mojang and the lucrative Minecraft franchise. As COO, Chiang was expected to "bring our businesses together under one operating model, making sure we make clear investment decisions, learn from our successes and failures, and hold ourselves accountable for results," Sharma said.
For her part, Sharma said she will have an update to share on the COO position at Xbox at some point, but she didn't divulge more.
The Xbox business was "not healthy" when Sharma took over, she said, and Chiang no doubt had a challenging road ahead of her. As for now, however, people can only speculate as to the real reason she left Xbox.
September was another terrible month for Xbox hardware sales, with sales of the Xbox Series X|S consoles in the US falling to an all-time September low. On the software side, Gears of War: E-Day is looking like a huge flop. In terms of services, Xbox Game Pass is set to get worse and more expensive in November.