Xbox Announces New XP Division to Expand to Film, TV, and Theme Parks - News
by William D'Angelo , posted 15 hours ago / 815 Views
Xbox has announced a new division called XP, which is dedicated to expanding Xbox IPs to film, TV, theme parks, and more.
Kayleen Walters will serve as president at XP. She is currently the president of Minecraft developer Mojang Studios and previously spent eight years overseeing franchise development at Microsoft. She also worked at Lucasfilm for 13 years.
Maria Angelidou-Smith will be joining Xbox as the new CEO of Mojang and Minecraft. Her and Walters will report directly to Xbox CEO Asha Sharma.
The XP division will focus on four areas:
- XBOX PICTURES: Bringing our worlds and characters to new audiences through film, television, and other forms of linear storytelling.
- XBOX PRODUCTS: Creating products that are authentic to the fandom that allow fans to celebrate and express the franchises they love.
- XBOX PLACES: Bringing communities together through live events, immersive experiences, attractions, broadcasts, and destinations.
- XBOX PARTNERSHIPS: Working with creators, brands, and communities to develop new experiences, sponsorships, and brand partnerships.
Read an email from Asha Sharma sent to employees on the changes below:
At Town Hall on Tuesday, I talked about the four Cs and the choices we are making to put them into practice. You’ve seen a lot of our work on Core and Content. Today I want to share two leadership appointments supporting Creator and Connection. Kayleen Walters will transition from her role at Mojang to President of XP, a new XBOX division focused on how people experience our franchises beyond the games themselves, and Maria Angelidou-Smith will join XBOX as CEO of Mojang and Minecraft. Both will report to me.
Kayleen has spent her career building entertainment franchises. Before XBOX, she spent 13 years at Lucasfilm helping guide Star Wars across films, products, and partnerships. At Minecraft, she helped grow consumer products into a multibillion-dollar business with more than 250 licensees and was Executive Producer of A Minecraft Movie, the biggest film in the U.S. last year and a top-five release worldwide. She is also a producer of the sequel.
XP is a play on “Experience Points” and formalizes four investment areas for us: XBOX PICTURES for film and television adaptations; XBOX PRODUCTS for licensing and merchandise; XBOX PARTNERSHIPS for sponsors and brand partners; and XBOX PLACES for our marquee broadcast and in-person events, theme parks, and other location-based experiences. Our franchises can mean more to people than the time they spend playing them, and Kayleen knows how to build those experiences with the industry without losing what made people care about the franchise in the first place.
Kayleen’s move also gave us time to think carefully about what Mojang needs in its next leader.
Minecraft is one of the largest communities in entertainment. Hundreds of millions of people play, build, create, teach, watch, mod, run servers, and build businesses around Minecraft. The community doesn’t just consume the product. It helps shape what the product becomes. That was central to our search. Mojang already has an exceptional game development team that knows Minecraft and its players deeply. We wanted someone who has built products for communities at enormous scale, who is deeply technical, and who understands how creators, product, technology, and monetization come together.
Maria brings a rare combination of those experiences. She spent nearly a decade at Meta, where she led Facebook Groups used by more than 1.8 billion people each month, as well as Events, Creators, Search, Profile, and Monetization. She later led product and technology at Personio and served as Chief Product Officer at Reddit, another of the world’s largest community platforms. She has built products used by billions of people and led product and engineering organizations through significant growth and change.
Maria brings deep experience to Mojang, along with a respect for what makes Minecraft special. Her first priority will be learning from the teams and communities who know Minecraft best. She starts Monday, October 19.
Please join me in congratulating Kayleen and welcoming Maria to 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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It is about time they went back to Windows XP, the last good version.
Damn, this is so cart-before-the-horse
They have a lot of IP to monetize. MS has not done a good job of this in the past. Hopefully they'll get their act together now.
I'm waiting for them to screw up even further.
Trying to follow Nintendo's lead.
lets raise that stock value!
So they keep firing people that do things, and instead open a new division with four subdivisions, so they will have more bosses they can pay boss salaries.
Most of the people they let go were either redundant or unnecessary
Sounds cool and smart.
