Amazon loses its head from Fire TV, Kindle and Luna to Unity



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After a five-year stint, Marc Whitten – the man in charge of Fire TV, Kindle and more – resigned as vice president of Amazon’s entertainment devices and services. News of Whitten’s departure was spotted by a consultant yesterday Matthew ball on Twitter (via The edge), and Whitten himself said in a subsequent tweet noting that he was “just digging in” as SVP and general manager of the Create division of game engine maker Unity.

In fact, Whitten left for Unity a few weeks ago. CEO John Riccitiello has confirmed that the former Amazon executive is joining the call for the company’s fourth quarter results, calling him “an incredible leader in tech and entertainment” and noting that, because that the company has so many projects going on, bringing Whitten to intended to help Unity “map and ensure the opportunity is seized with the ability to make it happen.”

Prior to his tenure at Amazon, Whitten served as Product Manager at Sonos, where he helped bring Trueplay and the well-rated Play: 5 speaker to market. And before that, Whitten spent more than a decade at Microsoft and came to oversee the launches of three generations of Xbox and Xbox Live. His hands were arguably fuller at Amazon, however, where he effectively oversaw nearly all of the company’s hardware efforts, as well as a growing range of services.

Case in point: Whitten recently oversaw Amazon Luna, the on-demand streaming gaming service that has slowly grown to run on PCs, Macs, iOS, Android and – until yesterday – all Fire TV devices. That’s enough to give Luna one of the largest footprints of any cloud gaming platform available in the United States, and the good news for Amazon doesn’t end there. Google’s decision to kill its proprietary Stadia studios justifies Amazon’s desire to provide access to existing games from partners like Ubisoft, rather than developing its own Luna-exclusive titles. That’s not a bad mark to leave, all things considered.



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