The engineer who founded Microsoft’s Xbox LIVE, Boyd Multerer, announced his resignation from the company via Twitter yesterday. However, the bigger story behind this is that the majority of the Xbox One’s development team–especially those working on Xbox TV–have now left Microsoft to do their own thing, or have been reassigned under Phil Spencer, the head of Xbox.
“Goodbye Microsoft,” Multerer tweeted. “It was a good run. Xbox was great!” He then concluded the tweet with “time to do something new.” He soon sent out another tweet saying that he is “not yet ready” to say exactly what said new thing will be, but he alludes writing code and exploring ideas.
Described as “the man responsible for Xbox LIVE” and “the father of the popular XNA videogame programming language,” according to his internal Microsoft profile, Multerer was the director of development for the Xbox One. He has also worked on the original Xbox.
When the Xbox One launched back in November last year, back when the console was pitched as an all-around entertainment system, there was still the promise of Xbox TV. Those who have left the company were working on bringing this feature into reality, but Xbox TV has arguably petered out–at least for now–since Spencer became chief.
Multerer joins the leavers group that also includes the names of Marc Whitten, Ben Smith and Kareem Choudhry.
Whitten is currently the chief product officer at Sonos (an electronics company), and he’s formerly the vice president of Xbox. He was the person who really wanted to catapult the Xbox One as a TV box, and he would defend the feature’s integration into the console despite opposition. Whitten is joined by Smith, who also works at Sonos. He used to be the Xbox TV program manager.
Choudhry was in charge of the development of the Kinect, but has since moved to become the director of development behind Xbox. Before leaving, Multerer was in charge of the software which enabled the Xbox One to both play games and run Windows apps simultaneously–the “snap” function.
Since Spencer came to be the head of Xbox, the Xbox TV part of the Xbox One has since lost momentum, especially now with the console’s new focus on games.
“We are grateful for Boyd’s considerable contributions over 18 years, including the vital roles he played in engineering and launching Xbox Live and Xbox One, and creating the XNA game-development language,” a Microsoft representative said in an email statement to Game Informer.
[ Source(s): Twitter ( 1 ) ( 2 ) / Microsoft ]
[ Via: The Verge / Game Informer ]
[ Image: Microsoft ]