Xbox Makes Leadership Changes As Bobby Kotick Leaves Activision & Microsoft

It's been confirmed today that Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick will be leaving his position at Microsoft on December 29th, 2023, and Xbox is making some big organisational changes as a result.

As first reported by The Verge, Xbox boss Phil Spencer's internal memo to employees revealed that a bunch of Activision Blizzard executives will now report to Xbox's President of Game Content and Studios, Matt Booty. This includes Blizzard President Mike Ybarra, as well as Activision Blizzard Vice Chairman Thomas Tippl.

In addition, King and Blizzard Vice Chairman Humam Sakhnini will be leaving the company in late December, while Activision Blizzard's Executive Vice President, Lulu Meservey, will be departing in late January.

Beyond this, Spencer says the leadership teams for Activision Publishing, Blizzard and King "will remain in place", and there are no plans to change the "structure of how the studios and business units are run".

He also concludes his note by mentioning that for most employees, their day-to-day work won't be changing, and he's excited to share more details publicly about what everyone's working on for 2024 "when the time is right".