Xbox Executive Vice President and Officer, Asha Sharma, released a public letter addressed to the Xbox team on Thursday October 8, 2026. This letter expanded on details about a new Xbox division, alongside a leadership shift that will appoint Kayleen Walters, CEO of Mojang, as President of XP, the new Xbox division. In her place, Maria Angelidou-Smith will step up as the new CEO of both Mojang and Minecraft, effective October 19, 2026.
At Town Hall on Tuesday, I talked about the four Cs and the choices we are making to put them into practice. You’ve seen a lot of our work on Core and Content. Today I want to share two leadership appointments supporting Creator and Connection. Kayleen Walters will transition from her role at Mojang to President of XP, a new XBOX division focused on how people experience our franchises beyond the games themselves, and Maria Angelidou-Smith will join XBOX as CEO of Mojang and Minecraft.
After announcing these changes, Asha continues on to explain the professional reasoning behind the current decisions. “Kayleen has spent her career building entertainment franchises,” Asha writes. “Before XBOX, she [Kayleen Walters] 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 and was Executive Producer of A Minecraft Movie, the biggest film in the U.S. last year and a top-five release worldwide. She is also a producer of the sequel.”
Kayleen Walters’ experience will be an asset to the newly established XP, which is a wordplay of the term ‘Experience Points.’ XP is dedicated to four main Xbox investment areas: “XBOX PICTURES for film and television adaptations; XBOX PRODUCTS for licensing and merchandise; XBOX PARTNERSHIPS for sponsors and brand partners; and XBOX PLACES for our marquee broadcast and in-person events, theme parks, and other location-based experiences.” Given Walters’ success across multiple entertainment mediums, the Xbox leadership team is confident that she “knows how to build experiences with the industry without losing what made people care about the franchise in the first place.”
As for Mojang, Asha explains that the company needed someone who understands the communities that exist within Minecraft, while simultaneously being able to manage the technical side of production. Asha explains that “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.” Maria Angelidou-Smith offers over a decade of success while working at Meta, in addition to extensive leadership experience with Personio and Reddit. Asha states that “Maria brings deep experience to Mojang, along with a respect for what makes Minecraft special.”
