With almost two weeks since Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard King was finalized and the company’s CEO recently stating it plans to double down on game publishing and development, the company is reshuffling its deck with its new/expanded leadership roles at its Xbox and marketing departments, according to The Verge.
Matt Booty’s role is now as president of game content and studios, which now includes a bit more first-party responsibility with the inclusion of Zenimax this time around, with Zenimx president and CEO Jamie Leder reporting to Booty. Maybe the hope behind the inclusion is that Xbox won’t find itself in another Redfall situation like it first did in May.
“Great games are fundamental to everything we do. We believe that an expanded gaming content organization — one that enables Xbox Game Studios and ZeniMax’s development studios to collaborate effectively together — will empower those world-class studios to do their best work in growing our portfolio of games players love,” Microsft Gaming CEO, Phil Spencer said in an internal memo obtained by The Verge.
As for Sarah Bond, she has been promoted to Xbox president, meaning she will be overlooking not just the Xbox platform but the hardware too, which might be key with some leaked upcoming hardware launches possibly coming next year. The updated roles on the Xbox side notably also include Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick, who is staying on at his role until the end of 2023. For the marketing division, after 32 years, chief marketing officer Chris Capossela is stepping down with the role set to be taken over by Takeshi Numoto.
“Takeshi has been at the heart of our Cloud transformation. I’m thrilled for him to step into the CMO role for Microsoft and drive our vision forward,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella in an internal memo to employees.
As part of restructuring, Microsoft is moving its entire consumer sales division to the Microsoft Gaming team, which will be led by Ami Silverman. Additionally, Yusuf Mehdi was promoted to executive vice president, consumer chief marketing officer,
