While many people may not know Boyd Multerer by name, they certainly know of his two largest contributions to gaming. Multerer, who was a founder and project developer for Xbox Live and the XNA framework, announced his departure from Microsoft on December 30 over Twitter. Multerer worked on Xbox Live when Microsoft started the project in 2000, acting as a development manager through 2004. From there, Multerer would find himself acting as a Product and General Manager for XNA, the framework that gave independent developers the tools to produce titles for the Xbox 360. Multerer’s involvement in XNA helped to spur a new generation of computer science students, while the tools produced notable indie games like Fez, Rogue Legacy, Dust: An Elysian Tail, Cthulhu Saves the World, Terraria, and Bastion before XNA Game Studio was retired in April 2014.
Goodbye Microsoft. It was a good run. Xbox was Great! Time to do something new.
— Boyd Multerer (@BoydMulterer) December 29, 2014
Roles in Xbox development continued during Multerer’s 17-year tenure at Microsoft, including working as the general manager for the Xbox Developer Program, working on various media projects that would make their way to consoles like SmartGlass, and as a partner director of development, working on the operating system, updates, engineering, game developer support and the Kinect until his departure. No new projects were mentioned in Multerer’s immediate future, other than tackling personal projects and teasing something secret for the future.
