Xbox CEO Asha Sharma announced the formation of a new Xbox entertainment division dubbed XP, which will gather all of the company’s film and television adaptations of games.
The division, headed by former Mojang president Kayleen Walters, a former Lucasfilm leader who was the executive producer of A Minecraft Movie, which generated $960 million at the box office for Warner Bros. last year. It will also include consumer products, partnerships, and live experiences such as theme parks.
XP will help Xbox franchises reach fans beyond gameplay through film and television adaptations, consumer products, partnerships, and live experiences. And XP, which is of course short for the gaming term Experience Points, will bring expert capabilities across Microsoft’s entertainment work under a unified structure.
It’s an exciting new direction for Microsoft to take advantage of the boom in game-related movies and TV shows, but it’s also a sharp contrast to layoffs at the Xbox game divisions, which started in June and are expected to hit 3,200 jobs.
Some of us remember back to the bad old days of 2012, when Microsoft created Xbox Entertainment Studios, which ended in failure and layoffs in Hollywood. That included an abortive Halo film from Steven Spielberg. There have also been more recent painful missteps, like the cancellation of the Halo television show on Paramount+ after just two seasons.
To that, Xbox said, “XP is about finding the right creative partners. It is not a production company. This is about expanding our worlds beyond the game, with the right partners, in the right authentic ways.”
And ever since the success of the Super Mario Bros. Movie, the bad fortunes of game adaptations into movies and TV have turned around, with other successes like The Last of Us on HBO and this year’s Super Mario Bros. Galaxy. (which is why it’s good to remember that GamesBeat Insider: Hollywood & Games is coming again on December 10 in Los Angeles).
Xbox noted its own success that these shows can have on its game sales. Fallout titles on Xbox Game Pass saw a five-times increase in hours played during Fallout Season One on Prime Video. And Minecraft saw over a 75% increase in weekly active users of the game year-over-year since the movie release (as of April 30, 2026).
XP formalizes four areas of investment: Xbox Pictures, Xbox Products, Xbox Partnerships and Xbox Places.
The changes are part of XBOX’s ambition of become the #1 entertainment and gaming company (as stated by Sharma here), and broader strategy to deepen fan engagement and expand how audiences experience its franchises in authentic and meaningful ways. Microsoft will have a lot of properties to take into movies and film beyond Minecraft, including Call of Duty, Fallout, Warcraft, Gears of War, Candy Crush, Diablo, Forza, The Elder Scrolls, Halo, and more.
Maria Angelidou-Smith will join Xbox as CEO of Mojang, the studio that makes Minecraft, the best-selling game of all time. As a reminder of the entertainment projects in the works, Xbox said Minecraft Squared, the sequel, is in production.
Other milestones include:
- Fallout TV show with Prime Video, setting records for Prime Video. Season 3 confirmed.
- Forthcoming Call of Duty movie with Peter Berg and Taylor Sheridan
- Diablo animated series with Netflix was announced at BlizzCon
- A new project with Hideo Kojima, Physint, which includes film and TV rights
- Blizzard’s BlizzCon this year attracted 35K people on site and 12.5M people watched at home
- The most recent Minecraft Live reached more than 144 million people
- Gears of War recently did a takeover with WWE
- And Xbox partnered with IKEA, Minecraft theme park coming in 2027.
As Kayleen Walters said in an internal email to her new team, “XP was created from a simple but powerful belief: the world’s most beloved gaming franchises have an opportunity to reach people far beyond the boundaries of the game itself. Fans don’t just play our franchises. They watch them, wear them, attend them, celebrate them, and connect with them in countless ways. XP brings together the teams responsible for helping Xbox franchises show up in the world in bigger, more meaningful ways.”
And here’s an internal email published on Xbox Wire from Sharma:
Subject: New leadership appointments and XBOX division
Team,
At Town Hall on Tuesday, I talked about the four Cs and the choices we are making to put them into practice. You’ve seen a lot of our work on Core and Content. Today I want to share two leadership appointments supporting Creator and Connection. Kayleen Walters will transition from her role as President of Mojang to President of XP, a new XBOX division focused on how people experience our franchises beyond the games themselves, and Maria Angelidou-Smith will join XBOX as CEO of Mojang and Minecraft.
Kayleen has spent her career building entertainment franchises. Before XBOX, she spent 13 years at Lucasfilm helping guide Star Wars across films, products, and partnerships. At Minecraft, she helped grow consumer products into a multibillion-dollar business with more than 250 licensees and was Executive Producer of A Minecraft Movie, the biggest film in the U.S. last year and a top-five release worldwide. She is also a producer of the sequel.
XP is a play on “Experience Points” and formalizes four investment areas for us: XBOX PICTURES for film and television adaptations; XBOX PRODUCTS for licensing and merchandise; XBOX PARTNERSHIPS for sponsors and brand partners; and XBOX PLACES for our marquee broadcast and in-person events, theme parks, and other location-based experiences. Our franchises can mean more to people than the time they spend playing them, and Kayleen knows how to build those experiences with the industry without losing what made people care about the franchise in the first place.
Kayleen’s move also gave us time to think carefully about what Mojang needs in its next leader.
Minecraft is one of the largest communities in entertainment. Hundreds of millions of people play, build, create, teach, watch, mod, run servers, and build businesses around Minecraft. The community doesn’t just consume the product. It helps shape what the product becomes. That was central to our search. Mojang already has an exceptional game development team that knows Minecraft and its players deeply. We wanted someone who has built products for communities at enormous scale, who is deeply technical, and who understands how creators, product, technology and monetization come together.
Maria brings a rare combination of those experiences. She spent nearly a decade at Meta, where she led Facebook Groups used by more than 1.8 billion people each month, as well as Events, Creators, Search, Profile, and Monetization. She later led product and technology at Personio and served as Chief Product Officer at Reddit, another of the world’s largest community platforms. She has built products used by billions of people and led product and engineering organizations through significant growth and change.
She will bring that experience to Mojang while learning from the people who know Minecraft best. Her first order of business is for her to learn from the teams and communities that make Minecraft so special.
I’ll be in Stockholm next week to spend time with the team and talk through the transition in person. Maria starts Monday, October 19, at the Bear Creek office.
Please join me in congratulating Kayleen and welcoming Maria to XBOX!
Asha
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And here’s an Xbox Wire post from chief strategy officer Matthew Ball:
Introducing XP: Building More Ways to Experience the Worlds We Love
Our ambition at XBOX is to be the number one entertainment company in the world. This means growing our games into enduring franchises that entertain, inspire and connect people across every generation and across the globe.
That opportunity is why we’re creating XP.
As Asha shared in her email this morning, XP is a new XBOX division, led by newly appointed President, Kayleen Walters, spanning film and television, consumer products, strategic partnerships, and live experiences. It brings together capabilities that have existed across various teams at XBOX for years and aligns them behind a shared mission: helping our franchises reach more people, create deeper connections with players and new fans, and unlock new opportunities for these fandoms to grow around the world.
Great games remain at the center of these franchises and at the heart of XBOX. XP will partner with the best creative minds across our studios, along with trusted partners, to build on that foundation and create more ways for people to experience the worlds they love.
The formation of the XP division formalizes four investment areas:
XBOX PICTURES: Bringing our worlds and characters to new audiences through film, television, and other forms of linear storytelling.
XBOX PRODUCTS: Creating products that are authentic to the fandom that allow fans to celebrate and express the franchises they love.
XBOX PLACES: Bringing communities together through live events, immersive experiences, attractions, broadcasts, and destinations.
XBOX PARTNERSHIPS: Working with creators, brands, and communities to develop new experiences, sponsorships, and brand partnerships.
Throughout her career, Kayleen has helped steward some of the world’s most iconic entertainment properties. Across 13 years at Lucasfilm, she helped grow and relaunch one of the most influential franchises in history. At Mojang, her record speaks for itself. Under her tenure, Minecraft grew from an already-record setting 350 million units sold to over 425 million, its merchandising business became one of the top 25 globally. A Minecraft Movie had the biggest opening weekend ever for a video game adaptation and finished #1 at the domestic box office, and Mojang secured the first of many theme park placements to come.
Kayleen understands that the strongest franchises grow by remaining true to what and who made them special while creating new ways for fans, creators, partners, and communities to participate. I cannot imagine a better leader for this division and we are just getting started imagining what it will build.