Matt Booty is the EVP and Chief Content Officer of Microsoft Gaming, overseeing content strategy and development across nearly 40 studios including Xbox Game Studios, Bethesda, Activision Blizzard, and King. A Purdue-trained engineer with an MFA, he began his career at Midway Games in 1991 - working on Mortal Kombat and NBA Jam - before rising to CEO of Midway in 2008. He joined Microsoft in 2010, led the Minecraft global team, and has since orchestrated some of the largest acquisitions in gaming history, including the $7.5B ZeniMax/Bethesda deal and the $68.7B Activision Blizzard King acquisition.
Simon Carless is a British-born gaming industry veteran who spent 16 years shaping trade media and the Game Developers Conference at UBM/Informa before going independent in 2020 to found GameDiscoverCo - a newsletter, data platform, and consultancy focused on how players find, buy, and enjoy video games. With 43,000+ subscribers on Substack and enterprise SaaS clients including 90+ publishers and studios, he's become the de facto Bloomberg Terminal of game discovery data for the global indie games ecosystem.