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Xbox expands its leadership team with more hires

Magic-DEI-Hire

Magic-DEI-Hire

Gold Member
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.
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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.
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www.thegamebusiness.com

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
www.thegamebusiness.com www.thegamebusiness.com
 
pudel said:
No, WE dont need this. ;) I need healthy competition in games, not healthy competition in useless platform wars.
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Platforms / exclusivity incentivizes first party games to be the best possible to attract players. Those high quality games then motivate 3rd parties to do better so they can outcompete the first party exclusives, thus resulting in better games for all of us.

Xbox, Nintendo, and Playstation all being healthy is the best scenario for the industry.
 
pudel said:
No, WE dont need this. ;) I need healthy competition in games, not healthy competition in useless platform wars.
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we need both, i'm a pc gamer mainly but still consoles have their space and purpose, and sincerely monopolies never work, doesn't matter the subject. to have a healty market we need good competition (not cartels ones like memory makers), in every sector
 
CentralScrutinizer said:
Platforms / exclusivity incentivizes first party games to be the best possible to attract players. Those high quality games then motivate 3rd parties to do better so they can outcompete the first party exclusives, thus resulting in better games for all of us.
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That sounds nice. But in reality these platforms just go moneyhatting devs/studios of off eachother....and make you buy lots of devices when you would only need one (or two). Most innovation comes from indie games/mods in my experience...not from AAA brands.
 
They can hire as many million dollar strategists as they want, but a 5 year old can already tell you how to save Xbox, and it's not going to be pretty or palatable to financial officers. They would have to significantly undercut Sony by eating enormous losses on hardware, have free online/saves, and cancel all Playstation ports immediately. None of which is possible during stratospheric AI spending and sky high component hardware prices and shortages.
 
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CentralScrutinizer said:
Platforms / exclusivity incentivizes first party games to be the best possible to attract players. Those high quality games then motivate 3rd parties to do better so they can outcompete the first party exclusives, thus resulting in better games for all of us.

Xbox, Nintendo, and Playstation all being healthy is the best scenario for the industry.
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People keep glossing over the fact that the reason xbox stopped with exclusives is because nobody was buying their hardware or their first party games. Gamepass is a big part of the low software sales but these games were all exclusive before and it didn't move hardware.
 
nush said:
I read the topic title and thought so who else is from an AI background?

Bias confirmed.
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I think this is a sign of the reality of AI. All the people that were in AI at Microsoft are jumping to XBOX probably because they know the grim reaper is coming for the AI division.

We just had that finance article about japanese investors ditching AI and jump back into video game industry stocks like Bandai and Nintendo. Maybe something like that is happening internally at Microsoft? I think the writing is on the wall in regards to AI profitability and growth factors and these execs see it also.
 
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draliko said:
we need both, i'm a pc gamer mainly but still consoles have their space and purpose, and sincerely monopolies never work, doesn't matter the subject. to have a healty market we need good competition (not cartels ones like memory makers), in every sector
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Is PlayStation really a monopoly when most people buy games on Steam nowadays? The only thing keeping consoles afloat against the inevitability of a Nvidia/Steam monopoly on gaming is their price tag.
 
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adamsapple said:
We know somethign is VERY BAD with the reading comprehension when we miss the first line of the second quote box.
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We know something is very funny when the zealot does not realize that xbox is in a situation so dire than MS cannot trust in someone within its own divison for one of the most fundamental things in a ... TECH company.
 
PauloRoberto said:
We know something is very funny when the zealot does not realize that xbox is in a situation so dire than MS cannot trust in someone within its own divison for one of the most fundamental things in a ... TECH company.
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DZlpeZoLJ59J6ydi.gif


Bro, just take the L.
 
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PauloRoberto said:
We know something is very funny when the zealot does not realize that xbox is in a situation so dire than MS cannot trust in someone within its own divison for one of the most fundamental things in a ... TECH company.
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J Jonah Jameson Laughing GIF




Move that post, keep moving it until you're out of the room and close the door behind you.
 
Hudo said:
Fire devs and low-level people, hire more management. Solid move.
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AI management at that.

"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."
 
Matthew Ball is a big player when it comes to future thinking in gaming (he writes those State of Gaming reports we get every year), but at the same time he has never been part of a GOOD execution of Gaming strategy, at least not publicly.

Asha is clearly building out her own clique within Microsoft Gaming, I think we might be seeing some big decisions coming our way.

Panajev2001a said:
"he also led engineering for Microsoft Teams" 🤣.
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Had the displeasure of using it to attend a workshop.. Most of the chat was people complaining about audio and video issues.
 
Fahdis said:
zfiJ2SQk9nfUGTfx.png
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This is nightmare fuel for a few reasons...

Let's get the easy one out of the way...Attack On Sharma there in the back is horrifying just out of the gate...GD.
But the casual way both them are kissing is just off putting as fuck. It's like the viewer is in the "corner of the room chair" getting ready to watch some shit go down.
lBgSiIeua8y9ori5.jpg
v41VxQ2n92AbMumE.gif
 
CentralScrutinizer said:
Platforms / exclusivity incentivizes first party games to be the best possible to attract players. Those high quality games then motivate 3rd parties to do better so they can outcompete the first party exclusives, thus resulting in better games for all of us.

Xbox, Nintendo, and Playstation all being healthy is the best scenario for the industry.
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Funny how somebody can post common sense like this and it's always the weirdos like Demigod that come along spamming laughing emojis.


That PlayStation look aid got em going coo-coo.
 
Topher said:
That turned out so well tho
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His planning may have been good. The rest of the teams failed at the execution. Amazon Games were looking legit and in a healthy position at one time. Publishing New World, Lost Ark, funding and publishing Tombraider, LOTR game in the works. Then it all went to hell after the AI stuff started, lol.
 
Scott's a good dude, at least in the few times I've met him. He's been all over big tech, but he's not really a games guy… but you don't really have to be for a CTO role, either.

Matthew Ball… I don't trust.
 
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Tobimacoss said:
His planning may have been good. The rest of the teams failed at the execution. Amazon Games were looking legit and in a healthy position at one time. Publishing New World, Lost Ark, funding and publishing Tombraider, LOTR game in the works. Then it all went to hell after the AI stuff started, lol.
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I was kidding. I have no idea who any of these people are

Tobimacoss said:
How many studios does Valve have? Do they create massive amounts of First/2nd party content?

A Steam Machine weaker than a PS5, that can't run most of the multiplayer or top 20 Console games isn't really good competition.
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Vast majority of games available on PS and Xbox are available on Steam. That makes them competition.
 
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