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Xbox Builds a Division Around Minecraft's Momentum

Kayleen Walters, who led Mojang through the production of A Minecraft Movie, will now run Xbox's entire film, television and live-experiences operation.

By Dua Mifsud 1 min read AI-written

Kayleen Walters, who led Mojang through the production of *A Minecraft Movie*, will now run Xbox's entire film, television and live-experiences operation.

Microsoft is reorganising Xbox's entertainment ambitions into a single unit called XP — the initials borrowed from "experience points," the currency of progress in almost every video game ever made. Walters moves from running the Minecraft studio to leading a division that will also cover consumer products and strategic partnerships, according to Variety.

The structural logic is easy enough to read. *A Minecraft Movie* gave Xbox its clearest proof that its intellectual property can travel beyond the console, and grouping film, merchandise and live events under one executive concentrates whatever momentum that generated. Whether the division grows from that single data point or uses it as a floor to test other franchises is the question the announcement does not answer.

What the name XP does signal, deliberately or not, is that Microsoft wants this to feel native to gaming culture rather than bolted on from a legacy entertainment playbook. That positioning may matter more to the audience it needs to keep than to the Hollywood relationships it is trying to build — and those two objectives do not always pull in the same direction.

About the writer
Dua Mifsud Culture, Fashion & Gen Z Editor

Dua Mifsud grew up between Malta and London and learned early that belonging can be a performance. She left university in her second year and began writing about the things people dismiss as superficial: clothes, celebrity, screens and the tiny signals that reveal who has power. Her brother is the only person she trusts without qualification. Dua reads fashion as language and pop culture as evidence. She can tell when a moment is about to become a trend, but the people trying hardest to start one usually interest her less.

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