The head of Amazon’s Fire TV, Kindle and its new cloud gaming service Luna have left the company this month. Marc Whitten joined Unity as an executive in the company’s Unity Create business. Unity is a cross-platform game engine that many developers use to make their games run on multiple devices.
Whitten’s departure, identified 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 that Google announced that it is closing its internal game development studios for Stadia. This left an impression on Stadia’s wall, as it increasingly appears that Google will focus on licensing the underlying technology it has built for industry partners.
Amazon’s Luna is currently available for 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 is still limited to the U.S. at this time. It is unclear when Amazon plans to make Luna more widely available.
Whitten confirmed his departure from Amazon on Twitter yesterday. “I’m just investigating Unity, of course, but it’s a lot of fun to see the amount of energy, passion and love of the creator / user here,” he said.
Before Whitten arrived on Amazon, he spent 14 years at Microsoft helping launch three Xbox consoles. Whitten left Microsoft in 2014 to take over as product director for wireless audio company Sonos. He has spent the past nearly five years overseeing Fire TV, Amazon’s Kindle devices and the launch of Luna.