Remember back in 2013 when Microsoft was advertising the Xbox One as not only a video game console, but an all-in-one cloud-based entertainment hub for the living room? Well now it appears as if the company is perfectly fine with the Xbox One being just a gaming console, as evidenced by the fact that all of the people who were pushing it as an entertainment hub have either been reassigned or have left Microsoft.
Boyd Multerer — the genius Microsoft engineer who founded Xbox Live, helped build the Xbox 360, and led the development of the three-operating-systems-in-one Xbox One platform — announced on Twitter today that he’s left Microsoft to pursue new opportunities. Multerer has been on leave since the Xbox One launched; he and his wife Keri launched the interactive erotica site Silkwords back in February, and now he says he’s focusing on other new startup ideas. But more importantly, Multerer’s departure means that almost every single person on the Xbox One team we profiled last November when that console launched has now either left the company or been reassigned under new Xbox chief Phil Spencer. Microsoft’s original vision of the Xbox One as a general-purpose living room platform has been drastically scaled back — Spencer is a games guy. That focus on games is paying off, as the Xbox One just outsold the PS4 for the first time in November.
