XBOX seems to be pulling out all the stops in its effort to reclaim the ground it has lost in recent years, and the latest step in that direction is the addition of Matthew Ball as the brand’s Chief Strategy Officer and Scott Van Vliet as Chief Technology Officer, as reported by The Game Business.
Ball comes with quite an impressive resume, having worked with Amazon Studios and is the CEO of Epyllion, while also holding important positions in the investment sector. Those skills are sure to come in handy as he navigates a situation for the XBOX that he previously deemed quite frightening. However, as the brains behind the popular State of Video Gaming annual report and a well-known industry analyst, we think that he’s up to the challenge.
Meanwhile, Van Vliet has worked with Microsoft products like Azure and Teams, alongside gaming experience courtesy of Amazon. He’s also been involved with classics like Cut the Rope and Fruit Ninja in the past. He’ll be a part of streamlining XBOX’s product pipeline, a task that he might find enjoyable, thanks to Project Helix being quite an impressive piece of tech.
The appointment of Ball and Vliet follows several other leadership changes by CEO Asha Sharma in recent months, including Jared Palmer as VP of Xbox engineering, Jonathan McKay as the new Xbox head of Growth, Tim Allen as CVP of Xbox Design and more. Others like Jason Ronald now head up Project Helix and the “Xbox platform”, while Xbox’s CVP of gaming ecosystem organization, Kevin Gammill, has departed the company.
