Xbox expands leadership team with major hires
Top industry analyst Matthew Ball joins as Chief Strategy Officer, while Scott Van Vliet is Chief Technology Officer
Xbox has added two big names to its leadership team: Matthew Ball and Scott Van Vliet.
The new recruits are part of an on-going drive from Xbox CEO Asha Sharma to move faster, build better products, and make more focused business decisions.
The Game Business can reveal that Ball is joining as Chief Strategy Officer. He is a popular industry analyst who is responsible for the annual The State of Video Gaming report, which is widely read across the business.
His first job will be to strengthen the console side of Xbox, which is facing significant pressures, not least from the rising costs of memory and storage. In an interview with The Game Business earlier in the year, he admitted he was “pretty frightened” by the situation for the console sector.
Ball had previously worked as head of strategy and planning for Amazon Studios, and wrote the 2022 international best-seller The Metaverse. He is currently CEO of Epyllion, a venture partner at investment group Makers Fund and senior advisor at KKR & Co.
Meanwhile, Scott Van Vliet joins as Chief Technology Officer. He was previously in charge of Azure OpenAI and AI Core infrastructure at Microsoft, and he also led engineering for Microsoft Teams during the COVID 19 pandemic. But he has a games background. He previously worked across games for Amazon, including Alexa, Amazon Game Studios and the Amazon App Store. He directly worked on the Minecraft: Fire TV Edition. Prior to that, he was VP of Digital Play at Mattel, and worked across brands such as Batman, Barbie, Angry Birds, Fruit Ninja and Cut The Rope.
His job will be to improve how Xbox builds products so teams can move faster and deliver stronger results.
In addition to these new hires, Xbox has promoted Chris Schnakenberg to Corporate Vice President, Partnerships & Business Development. He was previously VP of partnerships and business development, and joined from Activision Blizzard, where he spent 12 years in various strategy, business development and partner relations role. His focus is on third-party games, publishers and developers working with Xbox.
The news follows a number of new hires and promotions earlier in the month, including Jason Ronald taking leadership over Xbox’s upcoming Project Helix console.
“These changes are about strengthening our foundation by creating more clarity and improving execution,” Sharma said in an email to staff. “As we head toward Showcase and beyond, we’ll continue making the changes needed to position XBOX for the future.”
Matthew Ball is speaking with Christopher Dring at The Game Business Live on Monday, June 8. More details on the event can be found here.
Great hires!
Matthew Ball was a good pick. They’re gonna need him!