Matthew Ball is the kind of gaming influencer who doesn’t just tweet hot takes. He builds slide decks that some fans treat like gospel. Now he’s inside one of the biggest gaming companies on Earth: Xbox, where CEO Asha Sharma hired him as chief strategy officer. And because Ball is openly a metaverse true believer, the hire matters beyond org charts. It suggests Xbox’s future conversations, priorities, and incentives may get anchored to a specific worldview: real-time 3D virtual worlds, persistent identities, and networks where content, purchases, and social life can travel.

This timing is not subtle. Sharma’s “Xbox reset” is already underway, and it’s expected to result in 3,200 layoffs and see multiple studios cut loose. Ball, speaking to The Game Business after he was hired but before the reset, said step one for Xbox is shoring up its console business. But the biggest public goal floating around Xbox is harder to reconcile with console reality: Sharma wants to entertain “more than a billion people each day.” That’s the kind of target that makes leaders look for platforms, ecosystems, and repeatable participation. It also makes people wonder whether Xbox’s “fix” is just an efficiency move, or the start of a larger strategic pivot.

Ball’s background gives you the blueprint for why executives are likely to pay attention. He has authored and revised a metaverse book, “The Metaverse: Building The Spatial Internet,” published in 2022 and revised in 2024. He also co-founded the Roundhill Ball Metaverse ETF, which holds stakes in Roblox, Microsoft, Nvidia, Coinbase, and multiple major game publishers and tech firms. On the product side, he co-founded Prosimetrum, which describes itself as an “UGC gaming studio” creating virtual worlds for Fortnite, Roblox, and Minecraft. Prosimetrum is credited as the creator of “Steal the Shark,” a Fortnite island developed by Brazilian studio Dojo Maps. In other words, Ball isn’t only philosophizing. He’s invested, built, and bet money on worlds powered by user creation and social persistence.

Still, there’s a key detail that could calm the fears of anyone expecting an immediate “metaverse pivot” at Xbox. A source familiar with the matter says Ball is a passive partner in the business, not a decision-maker. That matters for how you interpret his influence. Passive partners can still shape what gets discussed at the top, which topics turn into initiatives, and which ideas are treated as “credible enough to fund.” But they are not the person signing off on every outcome. So the cleanest way to read this hire is as strategy gravity. Even if Ball is not driving every decision, his presence can tilt Xbox’s thinking toward the same themes that already attract him: ecosystems, interoperability, and scalable virtual spaces.

And the reset itself points to how those themes could be operationalized. Sharma’s initial improvement has meant reduction. She announced layoffs and studio cuts, plus a desire to simplify Xbox’s management structure and invest with “greater focus, greater discipline, and greater clarity.” But she also says Microsoft is not reducing investment in Xbox. That combination, reduction plus renewed focus, usually signals that leaders see a capability gap or a coordination problem, not an industry-wide catastrophe they can ignore. Sharma also hinted at where money might go: instead of trying to own all the best indie studios, Xbox “will help independent creators succeed by providing open development tools and audiences to realize their vision.” That echoes the platform logic you see elsewhere, including tools and audiences that let creators scale without Xbox having to build every game itself.

This is where the metaverse conversation intersects with practical gaming strategy. Ball does not claim sci-fi inevitability arrives without friction. He says skeptics have had “a real basis for their skepticism,” and the real-world record has not been smooth. Facebook rebranded as “Meta” and Zuckerberg’s VR avatar didn’t exactly land with broad enthusiasm. NFTs were widely dismissed as worthless status symbols or scam vehicles. VR and AR headsets have not swept away old-fashioned screens, and after a metaverse hiring boom, the tech industry shed thousands of workers. Yet Ball’s conclusion is still blunt: he is “certain that the future will be increasingly centered around real-time-rendered 3D virtual worlds and networks,” and he predicts computers and the internet “will evolve and be redesigned in support of the Metaverse.”

If you translate that from ideology into executive implications, it points toward two likely areas of focus: user-generated content and cross-world social layers. Ball also wrote “Fortnite is the future” in 2019, and he’s repeatedly linked his worldview to platforms where users create, share, and participate. Xbox’s strongest internal analog to Roblox is Minecraft, and the structure change there is concrete: Mojang will now report directly to Sharma, as it’s the closest thing Microsoft has to Roblox. That kind of reporting line decision is often how strategy becomes budgeting and headcount. The company might not call it “metaverse work,” but it can still be directed at the same mechanic: persistent worlds with communities that generate value continuously.

Peers are watching because Ball’s logic does not just affect Xbox. Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney, in a 2024 conversation with Ball and Snow Crash author Neal Stephenson, said a certain social media company’s attempt at virtual offices was “just totally lame,” but also argued that the metaverse is the inevitable future of real-time 3D in gaming. Epic continues that push with Unreal Engine 6, described as helping developers link up in-game economies and social features so players can take friends and purchases from one game into another. For Xbox, the strategic stake is straightforward: if the industry moves toward persistent 3D social networks, the companies that build or own the creator tools, interoperability hooks, and distribution muscles may be the ones that win the “audience each day” race. Ball may be passive on paper, but the worldview he represents is already shaping the kinds of bets top teams are willing to make when they clean house.

Ball hasn’t hinted at radical plans for Xbox’s near-term. He told The Game Business that Xbox’s console business is “durable and valuable and important,” and that upcoming Gears of War: E-Day “looks terrific.” Even in his book, he frames timing as uncertain, writing, “Though skeptics will shape the discourse, I'd guess that by the end of the current decade many if not most of us will agree that the 'Metaverse' has begun (though even in hindsight, there will be no precise date of its start, nor will we be able to predict when it will arrive in full).” That tension, between durable consoles today and a metaverse-shaped bet tomorrow, is exactly where execution risk lives. It also explains why this hire is a big deal: Xbox is resetting now, and the strategic questions it will ask next likely follow the same trail as Ball’s slides and book.