Phil Spencer, the head of Xbox, at Microsoft's Halo 5: Guardians preview event.
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Why Microsoft knows it needs to beef up its Xbox leadership

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 15 min

Microsoft announced today that Phil Spencer has appointed a new boss of games to handle the role that the executive had previously handled as head of the company’s games business.

Spencer will serve as executive vice president in charge of all things games at Microsoft — including hardware, games, and platforms. But Matt Booty, the former head of the Minecraft business, will now be corporate vice president of games in charge of all of Microsoft’s studios. The various studio executives will report to Booty, who in turn will report to Spencer

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.