Xbox Forms New XP Division as Mojang Gets Its First Outside Chief Executive

Xbox is restructuring how it turns its biggest franchises into movies, merchandise and live events, and it is handing Mojang a leader who has never worked inside the studio before. On October 8, Xbox announced the creation of XP, a new division dedicated to franchise experiences beyond games, and confirmed that Meta and Reddit veteran Maria Angelidou-Smith will become CEO of Mojang and Minecraft starting October 19.

What XP Actually Does

XP is built around four areas Xbox calls Pictures, Products, Partnerships and Places: film and television, licensed merchandise, brand collaborations, and live or location-based experiences such as theme park attractions. Rather than creating these functions from scratch, Xbox is consolidating teams and capabilities that already existed piecemeal across its studios into one dedicated division. Games stay at the center of the strategy; XP is positioned to work alongside Xbox studios and outside partners to extend franchises that already exist, not to replace game development.

Xbox Chief Strategy Officer Matthew Ball wrote the Xbox Wire post announcing the division himself. Xbox leadership separately described the thinking behind XP as treating franchises as more than just the hours spent playing them, pointing to Minecraft as the clearest proof of concept so far.

Kayleen Walters Takes the Helm of XP

Running the new division is Kayleen Walters, who moves over from Mojang to become XP's first President. Walters spent 13 years at Lucasfilm before joining Mojang, where she helped grow Minecraft's consumer products business into a multibillion-dollar operation and served as executive producer on A Minecraft Movie, which posted the biggest opening weekend ever for a video game adaptation and topped the domestic box office on release. She is also producing its sequel. Under her watch, Minecraft merchandise grew into one of the top 20 licensing businesses globally, and Mojang landed its first theme park placements, the template Xbox is now trying to apply across its wider portfolio.

Ball called her the obvious choice to build out the division: "I cannot imagine a better leader for this division and we are just getting started imagining what it will build."

A First Outside Leader for Mojang

Walters' move to XP leaves an opening at the top of Mojang, and Xbox is filling it from outside the games business entirely. Maria Angelidou-Smith joins as CEO of Mojang and Minecraft on October 19, arriving after nearly a decade at Meta, where she led Facebook Groups, a product used by more than 1.8 billion people a month, among other teams. She later moved into product and technology leadership at Personio before serving as Chief Product Officer at Reddit.

Both new leaders will report directly to Xbox's leadership, and both roles are explicitly tied to what Xbox internally calls its "Creator" and "Connection" strategy pillars, themes that were raised at a recent company town hall. Xbox said Angelidou-Smith's immediate focus will not be a product overhaul: "Her first priority will be learning from the teams and communities who know Minecraft best."

“Our ambition at XBOX is to be the number one entertainment company in the world.”Matthew Ball, Chief Strategy Officer, Xbox

Why Minecraft Is the Test Case

Minecraft's numbers explain why Xbox is comfortable handing its biggest franchise to new leadership on both ends. Sales have grown from roughly 350 million to more than 425 million copies under the structure Walters helped build, and the brand's reach now extends well past the original block-building game into film, merchandise and physical attractions. Angelidou-Smith inherits a franchise that is less a single product than an entertainment ecosystem, which is precisely the model XP is designed to replicate elsewhere in Xbox's catalog.

What to Watch Next

Xbox has not named which other franchises will get the XP treatment first, and the division's success will likely be judged on whether it can repeat Minecraft's crossover results with titles that have not yet made the leap into film or merchandise at that scale. Angelidou-Smith's start date of October 19 and Walters' now-formal presidency give Xbox a clear point to measure progress from in the months ahead.