One of Xbox CEO Asha Sharma's immediate vice presidents has left the company after just two months on the job.
As spotted by PC Gamer, Jared Palmer has left his position as Xbox Engineering Vice President, a role integral to Sharma's ongoing “reset” at Xbox. It is unclear who will take his place. He currently works at Cognition, a company specializing in AI.
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“Personal update: I have joined Cognition to lead engineering,” Palmer wrote on social media. “Thank you Asha and everyone at Microsoft and Xbox for a great year. We look forward to the next chapter.”
For reference, he only announced his new job at Xbox last May. “I’m excited to join Xbox as VP, Engineering and Technical Advisor to the CEO. [Asha Sharma]“I will focus on building world-class tools, services, and experiences for developers and players across the Xbox ecosystem,” he wrote at the time. “I’m grateful for the opportunity and excited to get started.”
Palmer's most recent work was at CoreAI within Microsoft, so his appointment worried some in the gaming community. Although he's no longer at Xbox, some of his fellow CoreAI alumni remain influential within Sharma's circle.
Sharma previously promised that Xbox wouldn't go all-in on “AI slop.”
It's honestly quite surprising that Palmer's contract doesn't prohibit him from doing exactly this. Perhaps Cognition wasn't considered a competitor to Xbox, so potential clauses preventing it from running elsewhere didn't apply. In fact, I think it would make sense if he jumped to PlayStation instead.
Considering the wording of his announcement that he was joining Cognition, it seems highly unlikely that he would be caught up in the latest round of layoffs. He joined Sharma's team at a time when she was undergoing a major leadership shakeup at Xbox, so it seemed like she wanted him to stay there for the long term.
As of now, there's no word on who will replace Palmer, but Xbox will certainly need “world-class tools, services, and experience” to get the project off the ground with 1,600 fewer employees following layoffs.
- brand
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microsoft
- original release date
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November 10, 2020
- Original MSRP (USD)
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$499
- operating system
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Proprietary (Windows-based)
- processor
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Custom AMD 8-core Zen 2 3.8GHz
- solve
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720p – 4K UHD
