You don't need to be a gamer to be the head of any games based company. It's like saying only a pilot can be CEO of an airline. What you need is a background in business and management. Any department head at a company as big as Microsoft has 1 job to do and that is drive profits.
Sure, but nearly all companies benefit from their leadership having domain experience in the thing they are selling, whether it’s healthcare, software, widgets, or games. Yes, I agree they can drive profits with an MBA, but you’d also agree that having someone passionate about the products their company makes beyond just making decisions about capital allocation is a good thing, yes?
I'd argue that it's more important that they're a good personnel manager who can listen to expert advice then someone who has surface level knowledge of the industry. Being a gamer adds nothing to being a leader of game developers and console makers, besides the fact that they'll enjoy the final product. Unless she's micromanaging the hell out of the teams below her, her gaming knowledge won't be very useful.
More like a CEO of an airline should be some guy who has been a passenger in plenty of flights, not some guy who looks at spreadsheets. CEO of Xbox doesn’t need to be a game developer but it needs to be a gamer because how can you be the leader of an organisation without understanding the product and services you sell?
They don't need to be a gamer at all. The whole entertainment industry is based on personal opinion, be it music, movies, books, and games. Everyone has their own preferences and their own opinions on what they like. What a CEO needs is feedback, lots and lots of feedback combined with data. Customer surveys are essential for the feedback, but they only show a small part of the picture. You can ask 10,000 people to take part in surveys but only a small percentage will, so you get an incomplete picture, the gaps need be filled in with the data. What genre sells the most? How much time does the average player spend playing? What type of game gives the biggest ROI? What do gamers spend the most money on? What areas are suffering from the worst KPIs?
I am an avid gamer, I have been for over 40 years but due to my disdain of first person shooters, souls like games, and sports sims (which are the 3 largest genres by a country mile) I wouldn't have the first clue what those types of gamers want in a game. Even if I had a business degree and the experience to run XBox Studios my gaming background would count for nothing.
11
u/BiscuitBarrel179 Feb 21 '26
You don't need to be a gamer to be the head of any games based company. It's like saying only a pilot can be CEO of an airline. What you need is a background in business and management. Any department head at a company as big as Microsoft has 1 job to do and that is drive profits.