Xbox Game Studios Chief Matt Booty on ‘Beginning to Hit Our Stride,’ Game Pass Strategy, More ‘Fallout,’ Studio Closures and More

variety.com:

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer Microsoft Gaming is taking a victory lap after an impressive Xbox Games Showcase presentation at the David Geffen Theater in Los Angeles on June 9, which was anchored by the reveal of “Call of Duty: Black Ops 6,” followed by major announcements across all of Xbox’s studios, including Bethesda, Activision and Blizzard, as well as collaborations with third-party developers.

Xbox president of gaming content and studios Matt Booty sat down with Jennifer Maas, Variety senior business writer of TV and video games, to discuss highlights from this year’s presentation, the inner workings of Xbox post-Activision Blizzard, and more for Variety’s “Strictly Business” podcast. “We are beginning to hit the rhythm that we’ve always aspired for, and that really is our commitment to our players, of being able to deliver a much more steady cadence of games on a more predictable rhythm,” Booty said. “We started really in earnest with acquiring and building out our studios portfolio in 2018, and then we had the wonderful ZeniMax/Bethesda acquisition in 2021… and then [in the fall of 2023], bringing on board Activision, Blizzard and King.

But it has taken a while to sort of get all of that up to speed. And in the midst of that, all of us went through COVID, which certainly had some ups and downs in the industry, across not just games but all of entertainment.” Listen to the full podcast here: Xbox’s showcase marked the first time all of Microsoft’s recent gaming acquisitions were featured on the same stage — a factor Booty thinks greatly boosted fan excitement and analyst endorsement surrounding the “critical mass” of announcements.