Xbox’s New CEO Announces More Leadership Changes

Asha Sharma, the new CEO of Xbox, announced more additions to the leadership team after bringing over four executives from Microsoft’s CoreAI engineering group earlier this month. In an email to Xbox employees seen by Christopher Dring, author of the Game Business newsletter, Sharma announced the appointment of Matthew Ball as Chief Strategy Officer and  Scott Van Vliet as Chief Technology Officer.

Ball is a well-known video games industry analyst who publishes The State of Video Gaming report every year. He’s also a published author, venture capitalist, and previously worked as Head of Strategy and Planning at Prime Video and Amazon Studios. Dring reports that Ball will be tasked with strengthening “the console side of Xbox,” which is something CEO Asha Sharma also called for.

Scott Van Vliet, Xbox’s new Chief Technology Officer, was already working at Microsoft as CVP, Azure OpenAI and AI Infrastructure. He also previously worked at Amazon as General Manager of apps, games, and Alexa. “His job will be to improve how Xbox builds products so teams can move faster and deliver stronger results,” Dring wrote.

Lastly, Chris Schnakenberg, Vice President, Partnerships & Business Development at Xbox, is being promoted to Corporate Vice President, Partnerships & Business Development. Schnakenberg worked at Activision Blizzard for 12 years before joining Microsoft in October 2024.

“These changes are about strengthening our foundation by creating more clarity and improving execution,” Sharma said in an email to the Xbox team. “As we head toward Showcase and beyond, we’ll continue making the changes needed to position XBOX for the future.”

Tim Sweeney, the CEO of Epic Games, was one of the first gaming executives to publicly comment on the news. “That’s quite a world class team being assembled and foreshadows serious dedication to the future of gaming for Windows, Xbox, Minecraft, Call of Duty, and the many world class studios in the Microsoft family,” the exec posted on X.

That’s quite a world class team being assembled and foreshadows serious dedication to the future of gaming for Windows, Xbox, Minecraft, Call of Duty, and the many world class studios in the Microsoft family.

— Tim Sweeney (@TimSweeneyEpic) May 20, 2026

As you may have noticed recently, Xbox is also in the process of rebranding Xbox to XBOX. The use of all caps for the Xbox brand was apparently decided after Sharma ran a poll on X where 64.8% of almost 20,000 participants preferred “XBOX” over “Xbox.” The change isn’t being reflected everywhere yet, but I hope you’ll excuse me if I continue to use “Xbox” for the time being.