Asha Sharma certainly hasn't shied away since being thrust into the role of Xbox CEO earlier this year. She's been forward-facing and outspoken about her plans for the platform, the latest of which includes making Xbox the biggest gaming company in the world by 2030.

Sharma spoke more about the current state of Xbox and how she envisions its future during an interview with Bloomberg Tech ahead of the big Xbox Showcase this Sunday. Quizzed about the state of the Activision Blizzard acquisition and the mass layoffs in recent years, it was one of the final comments from the CEO that was the biggest and boldest of the interview.

The Biggest Gaming Company In The World By 2030

Sharma was asked where she'd like Xbox to be by 2030, and her answer was an incredibly ambitious one. "I’d love to see us be the number one gaming and entertainment company," Sharma replied. That's quite the statement. To be the number one gaming company alone within four years is a hell of an ask, but to throw entertainment in there too is quite something.

Let's isolate the gaming part, for now, as it isn't even entirely clear what exactly Sharma and Xbox consider to be competition when it comes to conquering the entertainment world. In gaming, the competition is clear - largely PlayStation, but also, to a lesser extent, because it appeals to a different audience, for the most part, Nintendo.

The Gap Between PlayStation And Xbox Has Never Been Bigger

The gulf between PlayStation and Xbox has arguably never been bigger. The PS5 is outselling the Series X|S by a rate of more than three-to-one. You have to go back 25 years to the original Xbox to find a difference that big between the number of PlayStation and Xbox consoles sold.

Closing that gap to any significant degree, let alone entirely and opening up an opposing gap on the other side, is a tall enough order all by itself. To say that the goal is to make that happen within four years is quite something. To presumably lump Nintendo into that conversation too, along with all of entertainment, it's fair to say that Sharma has lofty, perhaps wildly unrealistic, goals for the platform she is now in charge of.

That said, when faced with that question, what is Sharma expected to say? Xbox has never been number one in gaming before - it has only ever been number two when Nintendo has been trying to figure out what weird thing it's going to do next. While it would be nice for Xbox to just be in a respectable third position again by the end of the decade, rather than the distant third it's in now, that's not the ambitious answer fans of the platform want to hear.

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They want to hear Sharma say things like Xbox will be number one within four years, and while ambitious, and maybe even a little ludicrous, there is a world where that can happen. There will be a new generation of consoles by 2030. Every platform is upsetting its users right now as hardware prices skyrocket. Everyone is going to get upset throughout this generation and into the next. If Xbox can upset people less than PlayStation, maybe it does stand a chance of being back on a level playing field again once it releases Project Helix.

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Xbox Series X

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