Amazon’s head of Fire TV, Kindle, and its new Luna cloud gaming service departed the company this month. Marc Whitten has joined Unity as an executive on the company’s Unity Create business. Unity is a cross-platform game engine that many developers use to get their games running across multiple devices.
Whitten’s departure, spotted by Matthew Ball on Twitter, comes less than six months after Amazon launched an early access version of Luna, the company’s new cloud gaming service. It also comes during the same month Google announced it’s shutting down its in-house game development studios for Stadia. That’s left the writing on the wall for Stadia, as it increasingly looks like Google will focus on licensing the underlying tech it has built out to industry partners.
Amazon’s Luna is currently available on PC, Mac, iOS, and Android as long as you’re invited to try the service. Amazon has also expanded Luna to Fire TV devices without an invite, but it’s still limited to just the US right now. It’s not clear when Amazon plans to make Luna available more broadly.
Whitten confirmed his Amazon departure on Twitter yesterday. “I’m just digging in at Unity of course, but it is so much fun seeing the amount of energy, passion, and creator/user love here,” he said.
Before Whitten arrived at Amazon, he spent 14 years at Microsoft helping launch three Xbox consoles. Whitten left Microsoft in 2014 to take up the role of chief product officer at wireless audio company Sonos. He has spent the last nearly five years overseeing the Fire TV, Amazon’s Kindle devices, and the launch of Luna.
