Bobby Kotick, CEO of Activision Blizzard, will formally resign on December 29. Instead of directly replacing him, Microsoft has brought together a group of former Activision Blizzard executives, including Rob Kostich (president of publishing), Thomas Tippl (vice chair of Activision Blizzard), and Mike Ybarra (president of Blizzard), to work under Matt Booty (president of game content and studios at Microsoft).

Matt Booty was moved to president of game content and studios, supervising Bethesda and ZeniMax studios, while Sarah Bond was promoted to Xbox president, directing all Xbox platform and hardware efforts. Kotick's retirement comes just two months after these major leadership moves. Now that he oversees Bethesda, Activision Blizzard, and Xbox Game Studios, Booty is taking on considerably more responsibility.