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Matt Booty

Matt Booty

Head of Xbox Game Studios, 2018 to 2026
Active 1991–present
Biography

Matt Booty is an American video game executive who led Microsoft's first-party game studios for eight years. He began his career in 1991 as an engineer at Midway Games in Chicago, working as a programmer and designer alongside the teams behind arcade and console hits including Mortal Kombat, NBA Jam, NFL Blitz, and Cruis'n USA. He rose to run Midway's Chicago studio in 2002 and became chief executive of Midway in 2008.

Booty joined Microsoft in 2010, where he oversaw the teams behind Minecraft, including the 2014 acquisition of its developer Mojang and that team's integration into Microsoft's gaming organisation. In January 2018 he was named head of Xbox Game Studios, taking charge of Microsoft's growing stable of first-party developers through a period of heavy acquisition, including Bethesda's parent ZeniMax and, later, Activision Blizzard.

In the February 2026 leadership overhaul that brought in Asha Sharma as CEO of Microsoft Gaming, Booty was promoted to Executive Vice President and Chief Content Officer, reporting to Sharma. A frequent on-stage and on-the-record presence for the company, he is one of the more familiar public faces of Xbox's studio strategy.

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The Subsidy
In April, Compulsion won a Peabody. Weeks later Microsoft is closing studios and calling Xbox something it has "been subsidizing." That one word covers two things a retro site has to care about: the people who make the games, and the promise that the games you bought keep working. Once your commitments are a subsidy, everything on the cost side is for sale.
Makers & Breakers · Jun 18, 2026
Profile
RoleExecutive
Active1991–present
StudiosMicrosoft, Midway Games
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