Microsoft has hired gaming industry analyst Matthew Ball as Xbox chief strategy officer . Ball publishes an annual report on the state of video games, which is highly popular in the gaming industry, and is “ widely respected across the spectrum of games, media and technology, ” according to Xbox CEO Asha Sharma .
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Sharma announced Ball is joining Microsoft in a memo to Xbox employees this morning. She described him as a “long-time player,” who has held strategy and leadership roles at Illumination, Amazon Studios, Otter Media , and Accenture Strategy. “Matthew has been with us on strategy since day 10 and will officially start this month, reporting to me,” Sharma says.
Xbox also has a new chief technology officer. “Scott Van Vliet joins as our CTO,” Sharma says. “Scott has spent more than two decades building technology and consumer platforms in areas like cloud, commerce, gaming and entertainment.”
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Scott Van Vliet led Azure AI at Microsoft before joining Xbox, and has previously worked at Amazon on projects like Fire TV, the Appstore, and more. “Scott has also been a part of the Xbox community since the original Live beta in 2002,” Sharma says. “There are no changes to the hardware, Helix, or OS that they will continue to report to me. Scott will start to ramp up now and officially start after the Showcase.”
Sharma is also promoting Chris Schnakenberg to vice president of corporate partnerships and business development as part of today’s leadership changes at Xbox. These are the second major leadership changes at Xbox in as many weeks. Earlier this month, Sharma added new faces to Xbox who worked with her on Microsoft CoreAI. It looks like these leadership changes won’t be the last.
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“These changes are about strengthening our foundation by creating more clarity and improving execution,” Sharma says. “As we head into Showcase and beyond, we will continue to make the changes needed to position Xbox for the future.”
