Amazon’s head of Fire TV, Kindle, and its new Luna cloud gaming service left the company this month. Marc Whitten joined Unity as CEO of the company Unity Create. Unity is a cross-platform engine that many developers use to run their games on multiple devices.
Whitten’s departure, seen by Matthew Ball on Twitter, comes less than six months after Amazon unveiled an early access version of Luna, the company’s new cloud gaming service. It also comes during the same month that Google announced it would close its own game development studios for Stadiums. This left the script for Stadia, as it increasingly looks like Google will focus on licensing the underlying technology it has built up to industry partners.
Amazon’s Luna is currently available on PC, Mac, iOS and Android, as long as you are invited to try the service. Amazon has also expanded Luna to Fire TV devices without an invitation, but it is currently only limited to the US. It’s not clear when Amazon plans to make Luna more widely available.
Whitten has confirmed its departure from Amazon yesterday on Twitter. “Of course I go to Unity first, but it’s so much fun to see the amount of energy, passion and creator / user love here,” he said.
Before arriving at Amazon, Whitten spent 14 years with Microsoft launching three Xbox consoles. Whitten left Microsoft in 2014 to take on the role of chief executive of wireless audio company Sonos. For the past nearly five years, he has overseen Fire TV, Amazon’s Kindle devices, and Luna’s launch.