He will report directly to Phil Spencer, the Executive Vice President of Gaming, and oversee the company's game publishing ambitions. After Spencer was promoted, his previous position as the head of Microsoft Studios was left vacant. Booty's appointment finally fills that after all these years.

In an interview with GamesBeat, Spencer issued the following statement when asked about Booty's promotion.

I wanted to make sure we had the right organization in place to deliver on our content goals. With that, I made the decision that I wanted to anoint a leader of our Microsoft Studios organization, which if you've tracked it, I've had the leaders of our individual franchises reporting to me for the last three and a half years. That's been great in driving our all-up strategy and getting us to the point where Satya was willing and eager to make the investment in gaming that he's made, but it's also become very clear to me that we're going to invest more in content, which we are doing, and that a unified studios leadership organization was going to be critical to our long-term success. I've asked Matt Booty to step up into the role of leading Microsoft Studios.

It's great to see Booty take over Microsoft Studios as he has a lot of experience in the gaming industry. He started his career in 1991 at Midway Games and eventually became their President and CEO. He joined Microsoft in 2010 and was mostly involved with Minecraft up until now. Hopefully his experience in the field will lead to more high quality exclusives on Xbox One and Windows 10. However, only time will tell what this change brings to the company. Replacing him at Minecraft is Helen Chiang, who takes up the role of General Manager.

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