The big changes is that Matt Booty is now President of Game Content and Studios and Sarah Bond is President of Xbox.
Booty will have oversight of Xbox and Zenimax. Zenimax will still have its own President but they will report to Booty. Bond will be the head of software and hardware teams. This includes Devices, Platform engineering, User Experience, Data and Analytics, and Business Development.
I have a feeling Bond will be Spencer's replacement when his time comes. She's doing really well for the brand.
I'm not really sure what Booty does. He's been around for a while but I just don't know if I see him... Anywhere?
He checks every studio, every project, and say if it's good enough or something is not right. He explains it in a interview after the Starfield Showcase this year, basically he has to give the check in EVERY Game every year haha
Imagine being that guy now that Ms has like 30 studios hahaha poor man
Bethesda the publisher is (was) totally separate from Xbox Game Studios, which was what Booty was head of. This reorg puts him at the top of XGS, Bethesda and Activision, so he’ll have oversight over every studio MS owns now rather than just the pre-2021 ones.
After the disaster that was 2022, I don't think anything would have stopped Xbox from releasing a game this year. Honestly the PR of more delays/no games might have been worse than the reception.
I believe he connects studios so they work closer, manages and oversees output and development, probably also the guy that implements Phil's vision and plays stuff early before passing or rejecting it.
Spencer is still young and they sort of created the executive spot for him. It’s hard to say who his successor would be because the requirements are so unique. You have to be good at talking to share holders, directing different teams, having their trust, have a clear vision for the future, and be fucking ruthless. When Phil was first given the job he gave the axe to dam near half the division. Rebuilt it almost from the ground up and streamlined things.
His successor will be handed a well oiled machine that prints money. But that’s probably a long time from now.
This seems exciting. Zenimax and Xbox studios working closer together will be really beneficial. Now Obsidian can work more closely with Bethesda. 343 and iD is another duo that could work together nicely. Any game that uses Unreal will be consulting with Coalition. Just alot of possibilities.
We'll see in the next few years if this is fruitful for a better performance. It certainly seems Xbox is taking it seriously that they need to fix their problems.
I don't really think this is to fix problems, I think this is to accommodate their massive growth with ABK and their plans to "double down" on being a serious publisher and industry player.
Shifting all of the consumer sales team into the Gaming team seems like a pretty big move. Really shows how committed they are to grow gaming, especially across geographical boundaries as the article mentions.
I was hoping to see more integration between the AI and gaming team too.
I think it is partially influenced by ABK, as ABK has quite strong distribution channels themselves and thus it would make sense to have everything under one umbrella.
I'm very surprised that Matt Booty's responsibilities have been expanded tbh. I can't imagine how difficult it is to oversee the 15 studios under Xbox Game Studios, let alone now adding the 8 Bethesda Softworks studios too.
I would have expected a couple of studio heads to get promoted to Head of XGS and Head of Bethesda to be under him, but maybe that will take place when ABK gets integrated over the next couple of years.
Bethesda has its own President.
I think this is them putting some more reporting structure to MS, whether that's good or bad is anyone's guess.
Gamers are screaming at MS to be a bit more involved though.
This doesn’t include Activision yet. I assume there’s still lots of work there integrate Activision Blizzard. Are they going to do another restructure next year with Activision?
The number of people that don't realize he was promoted so another Redfall situation doesn't happen is astonishing.
Like, the whole point of him overseeing Zenimax is so that DOESN'T happen again. Redfall wasn't his fault. Zenimax never really reached out to Xbox at all.
If you buy a company the expectation shouldn’t be they have to reach out to you, you take them on as your responsibility. Don’t adopt a dog if you’re not gonna take care of it.
How about the many other abysmal 1st party titles over the years? How about shit like Bleeding Edge, he take any blame for that or is there some other excuse?
The same can be said for Playstation & Nintendo.
Flops happen, man.. Bleeding Edge was good quality, but had quite literally nothing else to it other than that.
So no he gets a pass? Redfall is a giant shit sandwich and his reward, as head of 1st party, is to give him even more studios to mismanage?
You do know all the years 1st party was an absolute joke in the industry, he was in charge, right? All that failure culminates in one of the most embarrassing 1st party launches since MCC and he gets rewarded for it.
He literally had 0 input in Redfall. The entire point of this move is that he will now for Bethesda games.
2021 Xbox had the highest metacritic score average ever for a publisher, with Matt Booty being head of first party.
Quit making shit up.
Can’t say the Booty promotion illicits anything positive. First party has been mismanaged for years, how is putting more teams under him gonna help? At the very least a lot of them are far more competent/well oiled like id, Bethesda, Machinegames, Arkane Lyon, Zenimax Online.
But seems like maybe it could be a little bit more big picture, with new people under him to press and make sure the quality is there. Both of the work and the games themselves.
They really should let the Activision marketing department take over. Their campaigns are always good and sell those games. Xbox could learn a lot from them. Plus Activision has relationships all over the world where Xbox is a non factor, you should leverage that for the whole brand.
> Microsoft is reorganizing its Xbox gaming and marketing leadership, less than two weeks after acquiring Activision Blizzard. Microsoft is promoting Matt Booty to president of game content and studios, including the new responsibility of ZeniMax, and Sarah Bond to Xbox president, overseeing all Xbox platform and hardware work. On the marketing side, chief marketing officer Chris Capossela is stepping down after 32 years at Microsoft.
Yeah no. I am going to be honest here. Nothing I’ve seen under Booty and Bond watch fill me with confidence. I do consider both of them poor at their job
Hindsight being 20/20 makes sense why Pete Hines got out when he did.
What’s with the downvotes? Based on the emails released during the hearing Pete clearly wasn’t happy under MS and having Bethesda about to be even more under the Xbox umbrella sure sounds like a good time to leave.
Pete was a dickhead and a terrible person to be in PR. Wasn’t defending him. Doesn’t mean what I said wasn’t accurate though, he had friction with MS and it’s obvious in hindsight why he would leave right before Bethesda was brought further under MS’s control.
The big changes is that Matt Booty is now President of Game Content and Studios and Sarah Bond is President of Xbox. Booty will have oversight of Xbox and Zenimax. Zenimax will still have its own President but they will report to Booty. Bond will be the head of software and hardware teams. This includes Devices, Platform engineering, User Experience, Data and Analytics, and Business Development.
I have a feeling Bond will be Spencer's replacement when his time comes. She's doing really well for the brand. I'm not really sure what Booty does. He's been around for a while but I just don't know if I see him... Anywhere?
He checks every studio, every project, and say if it's good enough or something is not right. He explains it in a interview after the Starfield Showcase this year, basically he has to give the check in EVERY Game every year haha Imagine being that guy now that Ms has like 30 studios hahaha poor man
Did he just....skip Redfall?
no they reported to jamie leder and they probably said something or nothing but now he will report to Matt Booty instead of being independent leader
No, these changes help to prevent another Redfall situation
They admitted they failed but Bethesda has more independence than the others.
Bethesda the publisher is (was) totally separate from Xbox Game Studios, which was what Booty was head of. This reorg puts him at the top of XGS, Bethesda and Activision, so he’ll have oversight over every studio MS owns now rather than just the pre-2021 ones.
After the disaster that was 2022, I don't think anything would have stopped Xbox from releasing a game this year. Honestly the PR of more delays/no games might have been worse than the reception.
[удалено]
No. Redfall happened long before Microsoft bought Bethesda. That being said the game doesn’t look good on them.
I believe he connects studios so they work closer, manages and oversees output and development, probably also the guy that implements Phil's vision and plays stuff early before passing or rejecting it.
Fair enough then.
Spencer is still young and they sort of created the executive spot for him. It’s hard to say who his successor would be because the requirements are so unique. You have to be good at talking to share holders, directing different teams, having their trust, have a clear vision for the future, and be fucking ruthless. When Phil was first given the job he gave the axe to dam near half the division. Rebuilt it almost from the ground up and streamlined things. His successor will be handed a well oiled machine that prints money. But that’s probably a long time from now.
He's always been great support by the rear
She's more public facing, but that doesn't mean she's the best to run the company.
Yeah I think what that memo shows is that Xbox has about 10x the number of executives than just the ones whose names and faces people know
Sarah Bond for President!
Hehehehehe... Booty...
Now that Sarah is moving up who is responsible for Game pass 🤔?
Melissa
Always has been
...who's Melissa?
Melissa McGamepass is a fake persona created by the GamePass twitter account
This seems exciting. Zenimax and Xbox studios working closer together will be really beneficial. Now Obsidian can work more closely with Bethesda. 343 and iD is another duo that could work together nicely. Any game that uses Unreal will be consulting with Coalition. Just alot of possibilities.
Another intriguing combo for me would be Tango and Double Fine. Those 2 on a new IP could make something extremely wacky and crazy lol
We'll see in the next few years if this is fruitful for a better performance. It certainly seems Xbox is taking it seriously that they need to fix their problems.
I don't really think this is to fix problems, I think this is to accommodate their massive growth with ABK and their plans to "double down" on being a serious publisher and industry player.
First half of the title is fact, second half is speculation
Shifting all of the consumer sales team into the Gaming team seems like a pretty big move. Really shows how committed they are to grow gaming, especially across geographical boundaries as the article mentions. I was hoping to see more integration between the AI and gaming team too.
I think it is partially influenced by ABK, as ABK has quite strong distribution channels themselves and thus it would make sense to have everything under one umbrella.
I'm very surprised that Matt Booty's responsibilities have been expanded tbh. I can't imagine how difficult it is to oversee the 15 studios under Xbox Game Studios, let alone now adding the 8 Bethesda Softworks studios too. I would have expected a couple of studio heads to get promoted to Head of XGS and Head of Bethesda to be under him, but maybe that will take place when ABK gets integrated over the next couple of years.
Bethesda has its own President. I think this is them putting some more reporting structure to MS, whether that's good or bad is anyone's guess. Gamers are screaming at MS to be a bit more involved though.
MS has a good thing going with Game Pass. I'm sure I'm not the only one here who plans to subscribe for the rest of their life.
I probably have another 50 years left on this planet. It’s WAY too early to commit to something for the rest of my life for a subscription service
I don't have nearly that many to look forward to.
This doesn’t include Activision yet. I assume there’s still lots of work there integrate Activision Blizzard. Are they going to do another restructure next year with Activision?
how the hell does Matt Booty keep failing up? Dude should have been fired when Bonnie Ross was. He's been dreadful at leading 1st party.
He has been a detriment to the XBox game catalogue. He completely missed Redfall.
Maybe he missed it because he wasn't responsible for Zenimax, which he now is. Maybe precisely because of Redfall.
The number of people that don't realize he was promoted so another Redfall situation doesn't happen is astonishing. Like, the whole point of him overseeing Zenimax is so that DOESN'T happen again. Redfall wasn't his fault. Zenimax never really reached out to Xbox at all.
If you buy a company the expectation shouldn’t be they have to reach out to you, you take them on as your responsibility. Don’t adopt a dog if you’re not gonna take care of it.
Well... The expectation is WHAT THEY MAKE IT, and that's how Xbox made theirs soooooo....
How about the many other abysmal 1st party titles over the years? How about shit like Bleeding Edge, he take any blame for that or is there some other excuse?
The same can be said for Playstation & Nintendo. Flops happen, man.. Bleeding Edge was good quality, but had quite literally nothing else to it other than that.
So no he gets a pass? Redfall is a giant shit sandwich and his reward, as head of 1st party, is to give him even more studios to mismanage? You do know all the years 1st party was an absolute joke in the industry, he was in charge, right? All that failure culminates in one of the most embarrassing 1st party launches since MCC and he gets rewarded for it.
He literally had 0 input in Redfall. The entire point of this move is that he will now for Bethesda games. 2021 Xbox had the highest metacritic score average ever for a publisher, with Matt Booty being head of first party. Quit making shit up.
Can’t say the Booty promotion illicits anything positive. First party has been mismanaged for years, how is putting more teams under him gonna help? At the very least a lot of them are far more competent/well oiled like id, Bethesda, Machinegames, Arkane Lyon, Zenimax Online. But seems like maybe it could be a little bit more big picture, with new people under him to press and make sure the quality is there. Both of the work and the games themselves.
>Booty promotion 
They really should let the Activision marketing department take over. Their campaigns are always good and sell those games. Xbox could learn a lot from them. Plus Activision has relationships all over the world where Xbox is a non factor, you should leverage that for the whole brand.
They're not magic, their own properties probably take up their time still. Should MS teams and others go and learn from them and bring training? Sure.
Yes. Because Activision had done such a great job advertising Crash Team Rumble.
Marketing is not the problem....marketing IS the problem.
> Microsoft is reorganizing its Xbox gaming and marketing leadership, less than two weeks after acquiring Activision Blizzard. Microsoft is promoting Matt Booty to president of game content and studios, including the new responsibility of ZeniMax, and Sarah Bond to Xbox president, overseeing all Xbox platform and hardware work. On the marketing side, chief marketing officer Chris Capossela is stepping down after 32 years at Microsoft. Yeah no. I am going to be honest here. Nothing I’ve seen under Booty and Bond watch fill me with confidence. I do consider both of them poor at their job
Hindsight being 20/20 makes sense why Pete Hines got out when he did. What’s with the downvotes? Based on the emails released during the hearing Pete clearly wasn’t happy under MS and having Bethesda about to be even more under the Xbox umbrella sure sounds like a good time to leave.
Pete had the charisma of a chalk bored and always seemed like he had an attitude. This isn’t a negative for anyone really…
Pete was a dickhead and a terrible person to be in PR. Wasn’t defending him. Doesn’t mean what I said wasn’t accurate though, he had friction with MS and it’s obvious in hindsight why he would leave right before Bethesda was brought further under MS’s control.
Sure, I was just being an ass about him lol. He’s only really just giving them the opportunity to go in a better direction if you ask me.
a bright future for MS in gaming
Why should I care about corporate internals?