XBOX is making two major leadership changes as it expands how fans experience its franchises. Kayleen Walters will leave her role at Mojang to become President of the new XP division, while Maria Angelidou-Smith will join as the new Minecraft CEO.
In an October 8 message shared with XBOX employees globally, Asha Sharma announced that both leaders will report directly to her. Angelidou-Smith starts Monday, October 19.
The appointments give XBOX dedicated leadership for two connected priorities: expanding its franchises beyond games and supporting the enormous community that makes Minecraft more than a traditional gaming franchise.
Kayleen Walters will lead the new XBOX XP division
XP is a play on “Experience Points,” but its focus extends beyond the points players earn in games.
The new division brings together four investment areas aimed at helping fans experience XBOX franchises through entertainment, products, partnerships, and real-world destinations:
- XBOX PICTURES: Film and television adaptations.
- XBOX PRODUCTS: Licensing and merchandise.
- XBOX PARTNERSHIPS: Sponsors and brand partners.
- XBOX PLACES: Major broadcasts, in-person events, theme parks, and other location-based experiences.
“Our franchises can mean more to people than the time they spend playing them,” Sharma wrote, adding that Walters knows how to build those experiences without losing what made fans care about a franchise in the first place.
Walters brings substantial experience to that assignment. Before joining 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, according to Sharma’s message. Walters also served as Executive Producer of A Minecraft Movie and is a producer of its sequel.
That background makes the move a natural fit: XP’s responsibilities cover many of the same areas Walters has already worked across.
Maria Angelidou-Smith becomes CEO of Mojang and Minecraft
With Walters moving to XP, XBOX is bringing in a leader whose background centers on large online communities, product development, and technology.
Angelidou-Smith spent nearly a decade at Meta, where she led Facebook Groups, which Sharma said served more than 1.8 billion people each month. Her responsibilities also included Events, Creators, Search, Profile, and Monetization.
She later led product and technology at Personio and served as Chief Product Officer at Reddit.
Sharma explained that Mojang already has an experienced game-development team that understands Minecraft and its players. The search for its next leader therefore focused on someone who could bring complementary experience in community-scale products, technology, creators, and monetization.
“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,” Sharma wrote.
Angelidou-Smith’s first priority will be learning from the teams and communities that know Minecraft best.
Why Minecraft’s community matters to this appointment
Sharma’s message makes an important distinction: Minecraft’s community does not simply play the game.
People build, teach, create videos, develop mods, operate servers, and run businesses around it. Those activities help shape what Minecraft becomes, making community experience a central consideration in the leadership search.
The franchise also continues to expand through games, including Minecraft Dungeons II’s inclusion in the September XBOX Game Pass lineup. That gaming expansion sits alongside the broader entertainment and licensing opportunities XP will oversee.
The announcement does not detail new Minecraft gameplay features, monetization changes, or a replacement development roadmap. It establishes who will lead the organization and why XBOX chose her.
The appointments build on XBOX’s wider leadership reset
These changes follow the broader transition that began when Asha Sharma became Executive Vice President and CEO of Microsoft Gaming earlier this year, succeeding Phil Spencer.
They also connect with the ambition outlined in XBOX’s earlier reset plan, which described a goal of building the number one gaming and entertainment company. XP now gives part of that entertainment strategy a dedicated organizational home.
In her latest message, Sharma linked the appointments to “Creator” and “Connection,” two of the four Cs discussed at Tuesday’s employee town hall alongside “Core” and “Content.”
For players, the immediate news is a leadership handoff rather than a new product announcement. Walters will focus on extending XBOX franchises beyond games, while Angelidou-Smith will take responsibility for Mojang and Minecraft beginning October 19.
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