After a period of five years, Marc Whitten – the man in charge of Fire TV, Kindle and more – stepped down as vice president of entertainment devices and services at Amazon. The news of Whitten’s departure was released yesterday by the consultant Matthew Ball on Twitter (via The Verge), and Whitten himself said in a subsequent tweet, noting that he is now “just digging” as senior vice president and general manager of the Create division of game maker Unity.
It turns out, however, that Whitten actually left for Unity a few weeks ago. CEO John Riccitiello confirmed that the former Amazon executive was joining him during the company’s fourth quarter earnings conference call, calling him an “incredible leader in the world of technology and entertainment” and noting that because the company has so many projects in progress, bringing Whitten on board is intended to help Unity “map and ensure that the opportunity is served with the ability to realize it.”
Prior to his tenure at Amazon, Whitten served as product director at Sonos, where he helped introduce Trueplay and Play: 5 speaker to the market. And before that, Whitten spent more than a decade at Microsoft and went on to oversee the launch of three generations of Xboxes and Xbox Live. His hands were probably more busy at Amazon, where he effectively oversaw almost all of the company’s hardware efforts, along with a growing line of services.
Case in point: Whitten recently oversaw Amazon Luna, the on-demand streaming service that has slowly expanded to run on PCs, Macs, iOS, Android and – until yesterday – all Fire TV devices. That’s enough to give Luna one of the biggest footprints of any cloud gaming platform available in the United States, and the good news for Amazon doesn’t stop there. Google’s decision to shut down its Stadia studios is a justification for Amazon’s focus on providing access to existing games from partners like Ubisoft, rather than developing its own exclusive Luna titles. This is not a bad note to leave, considering all things.