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Comment by draculero | Hacker News Reader

Just out of curiosity, I checked her Wikipedia page and this caught my eye:

> Sharma posted in 2026 that she had recently begun playing video games under the gamertag AMRAHSAHSA to "learn and understand" the games industry

Imagine running the Xbox division and only just now picking up a controller.

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A part of me wants to be generous in interpreting that and say, OK, maybe it's the first time she's playing games semi-seriously in order to understand the capital G Gamer. Surely she's played games before, like say, the Sims, Bejeweled, Mario Kart, or picked up a Nintendo DS or Switch in her lifetime. Heck, even Wii Sports should count here in some capacity. Most people have played games casually in their lifetime by this point.

The other part of me though says that, no, it is in fact pretty possible that she hasn't played any video games of note, other than Wii Sports that one time. And even if she has played games casually, is it really too much to ask to have the person leading the Xbox brand be someone who can press the X button on their controller and not be confused by that?

It's a publicly listed company. They needed someone without the emotional attachment to 'Gaming', but with business nous, to make the decisions needed to meet her mandate, which is to ultimately increase shareholder value.

A 'Gamer' would have found that more difficult to do.

Press Q to doubt. There are plenty of biz savvy folks out there who at least gamed in high school or college.

I should have been more clear and my initial comment didn't portray the intent: sometimes Good business decisions requires a longer time horizon for the strategy to play out. But with companies on the stock exchange, Good business practice often comes at the expense of market perception -> share price. And when that happens, there is a lot of pressure on the Board -> CEO to ensure gains are being shown immediately.

So my comment isn't to suggest that a Gamer could be a good person to run the business with good business nous, it's that their experience in the industry would most likely lead them to make decisions that are Good but need a longer horizon, vs immediate impact to satisfy the shareholders.

It happens with any company, and we're starting to see this happen with Apple as well. As their main product lines have started to taper off in growth, they have needed to do things to offset that, often making decisions that are contrary to what Apple would usually stand for or would not have considered, say, 15 years ago.

Would we say that about any other industry? Can you run a film studio if you have never watched a film in your life? Can you run a publishing house if you’ve never read a novel?

I should have been more clear and my initial comment didn't portray the intent: sometimes Good business decisions requires a longer time horizon for the strategy to play out.

But with companies on the stock exchange, Good business practice often comes at the expense of market perception -> share price. And when that happens, there is a lot of pressure on the Board -> CEO to ensure gains are being shown immediately.

There's this little concept of "cultural sensitivity". Given the size of the King thing it would even be fair to have somebody who had a serious Candy Crush habit.

At least they didn't create a fake profile for her the way Elon Musk made one.

I think the "glass cliff" is going to claim another victim.

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