Xbox has hired your favorite video game developer’s favorite industry analyst, Matthew Ball, as its new Chief Strategy Officer. As reported by The Game Business and confirmed via his LinkedIn, Ball is joining Xbox with the stated goal of strengthening its console segment, which is in dire straits due to global memory shortages, recent corporate upheaval at Microsoft, and unrelenting competition from Sony, Nintendo and, soon, Valve.
Ball is a venture capitalist and tech industry consultant with a well-documented history of analyzing emerging digital economies and the video game market. He was most recently the CEO and founder of Epyllion, an advisory firm and digital production house that also runs a large-scale metaverse investment fund, and he publishes regular breakdowns of the industry’s biggest players and trends, including an annual State of Gaming report. Ball is the author of The Metaverse, a book beloved by Tim Sweeney, Mark Zuckerberg, Karlie Kloss and, not awkwardly at all, former Xbox head Phil Spencer.
