Xbox adds Matthew Ball as chief strategy officer and names Scott Van Vliet CTO

Xbox is making more leadership changes under CEO Asha Sharma, this time bringing in industry analyst Matthew Ball as chief strategy officer and naming Scott Van Vliet chief technology officer. The hires were detailed in a staff memo reported by The Verge.

Ball is best known for his annual games and tech market reports, along with his writing on the metaverse. According to the memo, he had already been advising Xbox on strategy and will formally start this month, reporting to Sharma. Van Vliet most recently oversaw Azure AI infrastructure at Microsoft and will focus on improving Xbox’s product development pipeline.

Sharma also said there are no changes to the teams working on Xbox hardware, the next-generation Project Helix console, or the console OS. That suggests this reshuffle is aimed more at planning and internal execution than at changing the company’s current hardware roadmap.

Another move in the same memo promotes Chris Schnakenberg to corporate vice president of partnerships and business development. He’ll continue working on Xbox’s relationships with third-party developers and publishers. Before joining Xbox, Schnakenberg spent more than a decade in strategy and partner roles at Activision Blizzard.

This follows a broader round of management changes earlier in the month, when Sharma brought in several executives from Microsoft’s CoreAI side and reassigned a number of existing Xbox leaders. As reported by The Game Business, Sharma framed the latest changes as an effort to create more clarity and improve execution.