According to Venture Beat Microsoft’s Xbox division just got a new exec. After being promoted to executive vice president of gaming by Sataya Nadella, Phil Spencer left a vacant spot open which is now being occupied by a man named Matt Booty.
According the Venture Beat the move will “…set in motion a clear succession plan within the games business, and beefs up the company’s ability to move quickly in games…” Overall the new role Booty will oversee game development and publishing of future first party titles. Phil Spencer expanded on the roles both men play at Microsoft explaining that “…he will be in charge of the grand strategy for games, while Booty would be in charge of executing that strategy in games publishing.” Overall as one of the new main faces of gaming at Microsoft, Booty will deploy teams with budgets, resources, and deadlines for first party titles like Halo, Gears of War, Killer Instinct and much more.

For those unfamiliar with Booty, his previous work experience included a resume full of titles as the CEO of Midway. Games such as Mortal Kombat, NBA Jam, and NFL Blitz are games he has helped develop and personally wrote code for. More recently he was responsible for overlooking the teams that were working on Minecraft. It was booty that successfully helped with the acquisition of Minecraft and its integration to Microsoft. His familiarity with studio developments made him a viable pick as many internal studios within Microsoft were looking for a new point of contact.
Booty had the following to say:
Overall, there’s a lot of exciting things going on here in gaming and at Xbox. Working in game studios has always felt like home base to me. I’ve been in games my whole career, primarily focused on working inside internal studios, going back to the days at Midway, and then coming here to Xbox. This feels a bit like getting closer to home, an exciting opportunity to get closer to how our games are made, and helping shape the future of where we go with our content teams.