Xbox has created a new division whose whole job is everything around its games except the games themselves. It is called XP, a nod to experience points, and it pulls film and TV, merchandise, brand deals and live events under one roof. Kayleen Walters, who has spent the last few years building Minecraft into a movie and merchandise powerhouse, will run it as president. Her move leaves an opening at the top of Mojang, and Xbox has filled it from outside the games industry: former Reddit chief product officer Maria Angelidou-Smith becomes CEO of Mojang and Minecraft on Monday, October 19.
What XP actually is
Xbox announced the shake-up on Xbox Wire in two posts. One was an internal email from Xbox CEO Asha Sharma to staff, published in full. The other was a post signed by Matthew Ball laying out the new division. Both make the same pitch: Xbox wants its biggest franchises to mean more to people than the hours they spend with a controller, and it wants one team accountable for making that happen.
The company says most of these capabilities already existed, scattered across different teams. XP brings them together behind one leader and splits the work into four branded areas:
- XBOX PICTURES: film, television and other linear adaptations of Xbox worlds and characters.
- XBOX PRODUCTS: licensing and merchandise.
- XBOX PLACES: live events, broadcasts, immersive experiences, attractions and theme parks.
- XBOX PARTNERSHIPS: sponsorships, brand deals and work with creators and communities.
Xbox is careful to say that games stay at the center. XP is meant to work with the company's studios and outside partners, not to replace game development as the point of the brand. Still, it is a clear signal of where Xbox sees room to grow. With Halo, Gears of War, Fallout, Minecraft, Diablo, Warcraft, Call of Duty and the rest of the Activision Blizzard and Bethesda catalogs in one house, Xbox now owns one of the deepest IP libraries in entertainment. Until now, no single executive has owned the job of turning that library into shows, shops and events.
Why Kayleen Walters
Walters' résumé reads like a job description for this role. Before joining Xbox, she spent 13 years at Lucasfilm, working on Star Wars across films, products and partnerships. At Mojang she ran the side of Minecraft that lives outside the game. Xbox credits her tenure with Minecraft's growth from about 350 million copies sold to more than 425 million, a consumer products business that grew past 250 licensees into a multibillion-dollar operation, and Minecraft's first theme park deals.
She was also an executive producer on A Minecraft Movie. Xbox calls it the biggest opening weekend ever for a video game adaptation, and the biggest film at the US box office last year. She is a producer on the sequel too, so XP's first big film project is effectively already underway.
In practice, the division gives a permanent home to work that has been happening project by project. Xbox's existing film and TV deals, its convention presence and its brand tie-ins now sit with one team, and that team has a record of getting a game adaptation to the top of the box office.
Partnerships, places and the four Cs
Sharma framed the appointments around what she calls the four Cs, which she outlined at an Xbox town hall earlier this week: Core, Content, Creator and Connection. She said staff had already seen much of the company's work on Core and Content. These two appointments, in her words, support the other two. XP covers Connection, the way people relate to franchises beyond the game. The Mojang appointment speaks to Creator, given how much of Minecraft is built, modded and hosted by its players.
The posts themselves point to what this already looks like. Gears of War: E-Day branding has appeared on the canvas of a WWE ring. BlizzCon is back at the Anaheim Convention Center. Minecraft has its first theme park placements on the way. Under XP, those stop being one-off marketing beats and become parts of one strategy with its own budget line and leadership.
Mojang gets a CEO from Reddit and Meta
The more surprising hire is at Mojang. Rather than promote from within the studio or bring in a games veteran, Xbox picked a product executive known for building community platforms at enormous scale. Maria Angelidou-Smith spent nearly a decade at Meta, where she led Facebook Groups, a product used by more than 1.8 billion people a month. She also oversaw Events, Creators, Search, Profile and Monetization there. She later led product and technology at the HR software company Personio before becoming chief product officer at Reddit.
Xbox's reasoning is that Minecraft already has a strong development team. What it wanted at the top was someone who understands how creators, product, technology and monetization fit together for a community that does far more than play the game. Hundreds of millions of people build, teach, mod, stream and run servers and businesses on Minecraft, and Sharma said that community helps shape what the product becomes. She said Angelidou-Smith's first priority will be learning from the Mojang teams and the players who know the game best.
What happens next
Both Walters and Angelidou-Smith will report directly to Sharma. Angelidou-Smith starts on October 19. Xbox hasn't announced any new film, show or park deal alongside the reorganization, and nothing in either post suggests changes to Minecraft's game roadmap. That includes Minecraft Dungeons II, which launched last month, and the new dimension already in the works.
The bigger question is what XP does with the rest of the catalog. Ball's post says the team is "just getting started imagining what it will build." Given Walters' record with Minecraft, the obvious candidates are the franchises with large casual audiences and no screen adaptation yet. Expect the first announcements from XBOX PICTURES and XBOX PLACES to reveal which franchises Xbox thinks can travel beyond the console.
