The non-gamer CEO racing to save Microsoft’s Xbox

Asha Sharma returns from one of her walking meetings around Microsoft’s sprawling campus in Redmond, Wash., to her relatively new office in the Xbox building, reached via a 1,100-foot-long bridge from the main offices.

It’s a brisk early September afternoon, and Sharma is wading through the next series of changes she’ll make at the legacy gaming business.

There are more layoffs to complete and more studios to consolidate.

Much is still new for Sharma, the 38-year-old executive whom Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella in February put in charge of turning around one of entertainment’s biggest brands.

Her office, adorned with Xbox controllers, framed Halo game discs, and a Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater skateboard, at first seems like an odd fit for an executive who famously had zero past video game experience.

Yet the Xbox CEO who’s replaced gaming legend Phil Spencer is moving fast.

Xbox’s finances have been in shambles while its market share has tanked from its peak years ago.

Sharma must fix its economics while improving its brand.

She has been blunt about Xbox’s poor performance; has cut thousands of staff members; is reimagining how Xbox markets and sells its products; is upending its tech stack; has divested or reorganized smaller studios; and is focusing Xbox around its biggest franchises and publishing groups, including Blizzard Entertainment.

If Spencer was a gamer’s gamer, Sharma is the decisive boardroom boss.

Only Xbox’s is a very big, and opinionated, board.

Every gaming conference Sharma attends, every decision she makes, and every post she publishes on social media is being closely watched by rabid gaming fans and Microsoft’s top brass.

“It’s hard to be a first-time CEO … where everybody sees everything you do,” Sharma told Fortune, sitting in one of her office’s blue velvet chairs, with several packs of NeeDoh stress balls by her side and wedding invitations from fans on her desk.

“We are trying to get done an inordinate amount of things in an inordinate amount of time.” The attention, Sharma said, is a reflection of how much Xbox matters to people.