Xbox boss Asha Sharma is back out doing some PR work again, this time in an on-stage interview with Bloomberg Tech. Many interesting insights were shared, including this: Game Pass suffered an 8-month decline and has only just begun to grow again.

“We’ve shipped more in the last 100 days than we have in the last year. We’ve been able to reset Game Pass after an eight-month decline. It’s now returned to growth and expanding revenue retention. And most importantly, we’re starting to to get get back to being closer to our players and our community.”

We’ve been able to reset Game Pass after uh an eight-month decline. – Asha Sharma

Sharma did not specify exactly what kind of decline she was referring to. That could mean subscriber numbers, revenue, retention, engagement, or some mixture of internal Game Pass metrics. She just vaguely hints toward it without mentioning specifics. In other words, exactly what you’d expect of a CEO, really.

If I were to take a guess, I would say that the return to “expanding revenue retention” is really talking about subscribers. To put it more bluntly, people bailed and are only now returning to the service. Hmm, why could that be?

Well, the eight-month timeframe is certainly notable. Count back from early June 2026 and you land around October 2025, the same month Microsoft made sweeping changes to Game Pass and raised the price of Ultimate to $29.99 per month. In April 2026, Xbox partially reversed that move, dropping Ultimate to $22.99 per month and PC Game Pass to $13.99. In other words, while Sharma did not directly blame the price hike, the timeline is hard to ignore.

Asha mentioned the Game Pass topic as part of an answer given to a question; how have the first 100 days been. So that naturally springs into what the next 100 days might look like for the new CEO.

“I think the next 100 days, we have to reset the business. We need to look at how we’re investing, how we’re prioritizing, change how we operate in order to return to growth, in order to be where the world plays.”

Again, vague. But that word pops up again: “reset”. That’s a strong word, indicating that Sharma is still planning pretty major changes to the brand. Given Xbox’s state, that’s exactly what the brand needs, but it doesn’t change the fact that it’s tricky to be an Xbox customer these days when you’re never sure what the company is going to do from day to day.

“We’re long on gaming. We’re long on Xbox. We’ll keep investing. But we’ve got work to do. You shared the numbers. We’re not in a healthy spot and so, you know, next 100 days is going to be about resetting the business.”

We’re not in a healthy spot – Asha Sharma

Game Pass has been a controversial topic since day one and will continue to be until the day it fades into memory, or until we’re all playing games directly through a neural implant called Xbox Brain Pass Ultimate Plus Family Edition.

For now, though, it remains right at the heart of Microsoft’s gaming strategy. Sharma’s comments suggest Xbox still believes in the service, but also that Game Pass has not been cruising along as smoothly as Microsoft’s marketing would sometimes like us to believe. An eight-month decline, whatever precise metric she was referring to, is not nothing.

The good news for Xbox is that Sharma says Game Pass is growing again. The more interesting news is that it apparently had to be “reset” in the first place.

Whether that reset is enough to calm players, satisfy Microsoft, and convince the wider industry that subscription gaming still has a bright future is another question entirely. But after years of debate about whether Game Pass is Xbox’s masterstroke or its giant green money furnace, Sharma has given everyone something new to argue about.

So, business as usual for Xbox, then.