Xbox Hires 2 New Executives With Goal to Strengthen Xbox Consoles - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 20 May 2026 / 3,441 Views
Xbox has hired two new executives to join the leadership team, according to The Game Business.
Video game industry analyst Matthew Ball has been hired as the Chief Strategy Officer. He previously worked as the head of strategy and planning for Amazon Studios and wrote the best-seller The Metaverse.
His first job will be to strengthen the console side of Xbox, which has struggled in recent years. Xbox has increased the price of its Xbox Series X|S consoles due to the rising cost of RAM and storage. He admits he is "pretty frightened" RAM shortages.
Scott Van Vliet, who previously led the teams at Azure OpenAI and AI Core infrastructure at Microsoft, has been hired as the Chief Technology Officer. He does have experience in games having worked on the Minecraft: Fire TV Edition, as well as at Amazon Game Studios.
His role at Xbox "will be to improve how Xbox builds products so teams can move faster and deliver stronger results."
In addition to the two new hires, Xbox has promoted Chris Schnakenberg to Corporate Vice President, Partnerships & Business Development. He had spent 12 years at Activision Blizzard in multiple roles. His focus at Xbox will be third-party games, publishers and developers working with Xbox.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can follow the author on Bluesky.
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"Video game industry analyst Matthew Ball has been hired as the Chief Strategy Officer. He previously worked as the head of strategy and planning for Amazon Studios and wrote the best-seller The Metaverse."
Uhhh, the same Amazon Studios that completely flopped and closed down numerous studios and games??? I'm not sure I would even put that on my resume if I was that dude lol
MS continues to ignore the elephant in the room...
You mean AI?
No. They are definitely not ignoring that haha.
Well they should. It's destroying the world economy and not really benefiting anyone.
We literally could not agree more.
I wanna see all AI data centres drone bombed, like Larry Fink worries about.
I asked someone the other day. I said, over or under, five years until someone blows up a data center. They answered with a straight face, "Oh, under. Easily".
I hope someone starts bombing them very soon.
MXGA, Make XBOX Great Again.
How many of MS's analysts & executives are gamers that look forward to buy a new console for it's exclusive games & features? How many of them have always been gamers since they were little and have a strong interest of the console wars (mainly in the 90s & 2000s)? How many of them are in a friend circle of other young gamers and go to gaming events & conventions that understand the cultural reasons behind the sales statistics that they are meant to analyse?
The problem Xbox have. Even if they actually really wanted to push hard on consoles again. Is that Helix started development under the old leadership. Developing a new console takes a long time and Helix is not a mainstream console.
Ignoring all the other challenges they'd have to succeed in the console hardware space, they'd need to actually develop a system aimed at a mass audience. Xbox aren't going to be back as major players on the console hardware business anytime soon.
Reminds me of that Simpsons bit where the Berlin Wall pops back up lol
Forza Horizon 6 is a great success for XBOX, feels weird typing Xbox now lol. If they keep making great games it will recover, it's nice to see my friends list come alive now Horizon 6 is out. I think the XBOX platform as a whole is overdue a platforming game, for example PlayStation has Astrobot we need something like that. I remember loving Banjo Kazooie on the 360, we need something like that to make Xbox stand out again.
Lol those are certainly two figures to have joining XBOX. In any case, glad to see Microsoft leaning further into building the XBOX as a console brand and not a service. The hardware industry is due for some competition!
Their worked at Amazon studios resumes , hasn't done much to enhance my optomism .
I think you'll find it is "XBOX". ;-)
