Marc Whitten. (Photo . / Nat Levy)
Marc Whitten, director of Amazon, left the company to take a position with Unity Technologies in Bellevue, Washington.
Whitten joined Amazon in 2016 and has overseen projects such as Fire TV, Kindle, and the upcoming Luna cloud gaming service.
He is perhaps best known for his 17 years at Microsoft, where he became a founding member of the Xbox Project in 2000. As Xbox Product Manager, Whitten was one of the main architects of the online service. Xbox Live and worked on three generations of console hardware. He also spent two years with Sonos.
Whitten’s departure from Amazon was announced by Unity CEO John Riccitiello on an earnings call earlier this month, but Variety and others reported the move this week.
“Marc is an incredible leader in the tech and entertainment world,” said Riccitiello, adding that Whitten “brings a lot to Unity and his leadership will add to our ability to grow and grow faster over the months and years. to come up.”
Variety reported that Daniel Rausch, vice president of Smart Home, will now lead the Fire TV and Luna businesses.
Whitten noted this week via his Twitter account that he “just dug” at Unity, where his official position is as senior vice president and general manager of Unity Create Solutions.
Unity’s main product is its eponymous cross-platform game engine, which it launched in 2005. Since its inception, Unity has grown to power hundreds of games on the market, ranging from garage projects to hits. mainstream, including Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout and Pokemon Go. A limited version of Unity can be downloaded for free, but major studios have to pay an annual service fee to access the software.
The company offers both Unity Create, an assortment of authoring tools for game design and 3D modeling, and Unity Operate, which provides business management features such as backend management. In a February 24 blog post on Unity’s website, the company claims that 94 of the top 100 development studios in the world are using Unity Create, Unity Operate, or both.
Unity raised more than $ 1.3 billion after going public in September.
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