Microsoft Hired An Analyst With An Influential Video Game Blog To Fix Xbox

Xbox has hired your favorite video game developer’s favorite industry analyst, Matthew Ball, as its new chief strategy officer. As reported The gaming business and confirmed via his LinkedIn, Ball is joining Xbox with the stated goal of strengthening its console segment, which is in dire straits due to the global memory shortage, recent Microsoft corporate upheaval, and relentless competition from Sony, Nintendo, and, soon, Valve.

Ball is a venture capital and technology industry consultant with well-documented experience analyzing emerging digital economies and the video game market. He was most recently CEO and founder of Epyllion, a consulting firm and digital production house that also runs a large-scale metaverse investment fund, and he regularly publishes analyzes of the industry’s biggest players and trends, including an annual State of Gaming report. Ball is the author of The metaversea book beloved by Tim Sweeney, Mark Zuckerberg, Karlie Kloss and, not at all embarrassingly, former Xbox boss Phil Spencer.

Microsoft shook up its longtime Xbox leadership team in February, with Spencer and president Sarah Bond leaving, and Xbox Game Studios head Matty Booty promoted to chief content officer. Asha Sharma, former president of Microsoft’s CoreAI division, filled Spencer’s former role as CEO of Microsoft Gaming. Since taking office, Sharma has slashed Game Pass prices, launched a PC-console hybrid called Project Helix, and removed Microsoft’s Copilot AI assistant from the Xbox ecosystem. And now she’s hired Ball to define Xbox’s new approach to hardware.

This year’s hierarchy changes came after a new wave of mass layoffs at Microsoft in July 2025 hit the gaming industry hard, leading to multiple game cancellations and studio closures. This, of course, after Microsoft spent a few years greedily acquiring studios including Double Fine, Compulsion Games, and ZeniMax Media, culminating in the court-approved $69 billion purchase of Activision Blizzard in 2023.

In another company move, Scott Van Vliet, former head of Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI and AI Core infrastructure, is now joining Xbox as chief technology officer. This decision was first reported by The gaming business‘ article and confirmed on LinkedIn shortly after.