Xbox Hires Analyst Who Said Gaming Is Losing the Attention War as Chief Strategy Officer

Asha Sharma has been running Xbox for only a matter of months, and she is already reshaping the executive bench at a pace that suggests she is not interested in incremental adjustments. The latest addition is a striking one: Matthew Ball, the industry analyst who earlier this year argued that video games are losing an attention war to TikTok, crypto, AI apps, and OnlyFans, has been hired as Xbox's new chief strategy officer.

According to The Game Business, Ball's first priority will be shoring up the console side of Xbox, particularly as rising component costs put pressure on hardware margins. That is a specific, high-stakes brief for someone stepping in from the outside.

The analyst who called out gaming's attention problem

Ball is not your typical corporate hire. Before joining Xbox, he served as head of strategy at Amazon Studios and has spent recent years working as a venture capitalist and market advisor. He authored the book The Metaverse and publishes an annual State of Video Gaming report. His most recent edition pointed directly at the problem Xbox is presumably paying him to help solve: that games are struggling to compete for people's time against faster, more addictive platforms.

Here's the thing: hiring the person who diagnosed the illness to help write the prescription is either a smart move or a very expensive acknowledgment that the problem is real. Probably both.

Ball's background is strategic and analytical rather than operational, which makes his appointment as chief strategy officer a logical fit. What most players miss in executive appointments like this is that the title signals intent. Xbox is not just hiring a manager; it is hiring someone to tell it where to aim.

Scott Van Vliet rounds out the new leadership tier

Ball is not the only new face. Scott Van Vliet is coming in as Xbox's new chief technology officer, bringing an AI-focused background from within Microsoft. He also has some gaming history, having worked at Amazon Game Studios (not exactly a glowing reference right now, given recent reports around that operation) and led the Digital Play team at toy manufacturer Mattel. His reported mandate is improving how Xbox actually builds its products.

Sharma told staff in an internal email: "These changes are about strengthening our foundation by creating more clarity and improving execution. As we head toward Showcase and beyond, we'll continue making the changes needed to position Xbox for the future."

That framing, foundation-building ahead of a public showcase, suggests the June event may be used to signal what the new leadership direction actually looks like in practice.

Sharma's broader reset of Xbox

This latest round of hires follows several appointments earlier in May, most of which brought in executives with AI backgrounds. Sharma has an AI background herself, which partly explains the pattern. That said, she recently cancelled the AI-driven Copilot gaming sidekick feature, a move that read more as clearing the decks for faster execution than a retreat from AI broadly.

Sharma took over from Phil Spencer, who retired earlier this year, and has since dropped the Xbox Play Anywhere campaign and repeatedly used the word "reset" to describe her goals for the console business. The changes so far are real but still theoretical in terms of player-facing impact.

Project Helix, Xbox's next-gen console, is reportedly not getting dev kits out until 2027, so the console business Ball is being asked to strengthen is working on a longer timeline than the next few quarters.

For a deeper look at how Xbox's game library is shaping up in the meantime, the game reviews section has ongoing coverage of what is actually worth your time on the platform. And if you want to stay across the broader Xbox ecosystem, the gaming guides hub covers everything from first-party titles to Game Pass picks.

The Xbox Games Showcase on June 7 is shaping up as Sharma's first real public statement about where this all leads.