Xbox CEO Asha Sharma has made further changes to the brand’s leadership team, appointing industry analyst Matthew Ball as chief strategy officer and Scott Van Vliet as chief technology officer. Ball is a venture partner, advisor and investor who has become well-known for his annual industry reports and wrote a well-received book on the metaverse; Van Vliet had recently served as a corporate VP overseeing Azure AI infrastructure.
In keeping with the group’s recent efforts to emphasise its authenticity to the playing audience, Sharma described Ball as a “longtime gamer” in a memo to Xbox staff announcing the hire, and Van Vliet as having “been part of the Xbox community since the original Live beta in 2002.” Van Vliet’s previous gaming experience was at Amazon leading product teams developing platforms for games on Alexa, FireTV and Android. The memo was reported by The Verge and The Game Business.
Sharma said that Ball was “widely respected across gaming, media, and technology,” who had been “partnering with us on strategy since day 10 and will officially start this month, reporting to me.” Van Vliet’s focus will be on improving the product development pipeline. Sharma said there would be no changes to the teams working on hardware, the next-generation Project Helix, or the console OS.
Sharma also promoted Chris Schnakenberg to corporate vice president of partnerships and business development, working on third-party relationships with developers and publishers; he’d previously held a VP role in the same function, after twelve years in strategy and partner roles at Activision Blizzard.
The announcement follows a more extensive management change earlier this month, in which Sharma appointed four new executives who’d previously worked with her on Microsoft’s CoreAI product and reassigned four existing leaders within the group including Helix hardware lead Jason Ronald.
Today’s changes are “about strengthening our foundation by creating more clarity and improving execution,” said Sharma, who pledged to “continue making the changes needed to position Xbox for the future.”
