Xbox Live and XNA founder Boyd Multerer departs Microsoft after 18 years

Boyd Multerer, the man credited with leading the creation of the Xbox Live service at Microsoft, and who later helped to make the XNA game development tools, announced his departure from the company today after working for 18 years at Microsoft.

Multerer used his Twitter account to publicly announce he was leaving Microsoft, saying, "It was a good run. Xbox was Great! Time to do something new."

When asked by a fan if he was departing the company due to any unhappiness with the Xbox's leadership team, Multerer replied, "Nothing is perfect, but Xbox Leadership is fine. On the other hand, I'm complicated. I think that is good?" He didn't want to reveal what he was working on next but did say, "But OMG is writing code every day and exploring ideas fun!"

During his time at Microsoft, Boyd Multerer was the very first person to log into Microsoft's Xbox Live, made for the first version of the console. He later helped to create XNA, which was used by many small development teams to make games for Windows and the Xbox 360. In his last years at Microsoft, Multerer was the Director of Development for the Xbox One console.

Source: Boyd Multerer (Twitter), Via: Neowin