MicrosoftBoyd MultererBoyd Multerer, once called
"Xbox's Father of Invention" has left Microsoft.
Multerer is the engineer who launched Xbox Live, helped create Xbox One, and launched Microsoft's XNA game development platform.
Multerer, known as "Grey Matter" on Xbox Live, had been at Microsoft for nearly 18 years, starting off as an engineer with Microsoft's popular Web server before helping Microsoft become a big player in the video game market.
He was also involved in the design of Kinect, Xbox's TV services, managing a budget of 10's of millions of dollars, he says on LinkedIn.
Multerer announced his departure on Twitter on Monday:
Goodbye Microsoft. It was a good run. Xbox was Great! Time to do something new.
- Boyd Multerer (@BoydMulterer) December 29, 2014
Not yet ready to say what that new thing is… But OMG is writing code very day and exploring ideas fun!
- Boyd Multerer (@BoydMulterer) December 29, 2014
Xbox and Xbox Live has been on a roller coaster the past few weeks. About a month ago, Microsoft announced good news: that retailers had order 10 million consoles.
But no sooner did lucky gamers unwrap their new holiday Xbox consoles, then Xbox Live went down, knocked offline with a hacking group that calls itself the Lizard Squad taking credit. (They also take credit for disrupted rival Sony's online gaming network).
And now, Multerer is moving on.