Stephen Elop Is Your New Xbox Head

Xbox fans may need to brace themselves for this news: following Satya Nadella’s rise as Microsoft CEO, his fellow nominee, Stephen Elop, is taking a position as head of Devices. This makes him the new head of Xbox.

Previously, the Xbox division was headed by Don Mattrick in 2007 to 2013, and then in the interim by veteran Windows dev Julie Larson-Green.  Julie really was not in place long enough for us to make any assessments about her performance. Team Xbox basically went through the steps launching the console, and are still enacting that plan for Tier 2 and 3 countries.

Mattrick’s influence on the division is easier to define and tangible. Under his watch, the Xbox 360 install base rose from 10 to 76 million, and Xbox Live membership from 6 to 48 million. Under his watch, the console entered the motion control business with Kinect, and it became more of an entertainment console.

Before Mattrick, Xbox’s most defining boss was Ed Fries, then head of Microsoft’s gaming division, who gave the go-ahead to the four engineers from the DirectX team to develop the console. Fries did the hard work promoting the console to developers, and worked towards the acquisitions of Bungie, Rare, and Ensemble Studios. Fries was there for Xbox from its launch in 2001 until when he left Microsoft in 2004.

To be frank, Stephen Elop is coming into his position as head of Devices (in charge of Windows Phone and Surface as well as Xbox) with the less stellar of credentials. Although he built a name for himself in Microsoft as part of their Office Division in 2008 to 2010, he is more famous for his time as Nokia CEO from 2010 to 2013. Under his watch, Nokias revenue and profits fell year after year, right until its acquisition by Microsoft. Elop is also infamous for his ‘Burning Platform’ memo, considered the most damaging memo in corporate governance.

And so, I do not exaggerate when I say that this is not necessarily the greatest news for Microsoft. Of course, I’m sure you remember Elop talking about selling the Xbox division as well. I think the Xbox business is momentarily safe, but one can only hope it continues to perform well enough for Elop not to act through on his earlier statements.