UPDATE 6.00pm (UK): In a formal statement, Xbox told Eurogamer: “We don’t discuss individual personnel matters. We’re grateful for Helen’s years of service and wish her well”.<\/p>\n
A verified source familiar with the situation separately told Eurogamer that Helen Chiang had allegedly been “terminated for policy violations”. Eurogamer has not been able to independently verify this claim.<\/p>\n
Original story follows.<\/p>\n
ORIGINAL STORY 2.00pm BST: Helen Chiang, Xbox’s first-ever chief operating officer (COO), is leaving Microsoft just three months after taking the job.<\/p>\n
According to The Verge<\/a>, Xbox CEO Asha Sharma confirmed Chiang’s departure in an internal memo circulated on 23rd October.<\/p>\n “Helen Chiang is leaving Microsoft today. I’m grateful for her years of service and wish her well,” Sharma wrote.<\/p>\n Sharma provided no details on why Chiang – who’d been at Microsoft for 21 years and had previously served as head of Minecraft – was leaving the company, only adding, “we’ll share more on COO leadership as plans are finalised”. It’s thought her duties will be shared between other Xbox execs.<\/p>\n Sharma created the role in July as part of Xbox’s massive “reset”, saying it was needed to “work toward a shared goal, make the right tradeoffs, and get things done”. It also came with 3200 layoffs and four studio departures in “most significant” Xbox restructuring in history<\/a>.<\/p>\n Microsoft revealed that Psychonauts<\/a> developer Double Fine, State of Decay<\/a> studio Undead Labs, and South of Midnight<\/a> developer Compulsion Games would go independent following negotiations, while Hellblade<\/a> developer Ninja Theory is now likely to close<\/a> after two acquisition deals fell through.<\/p>\n Arkane Lyon – the beloved immersive sim studio behind the likes of Dishonored<\/a> and Deathloop<\/a> – is the one still in limbo, and yesterday we learned it reportedly only has until November to find a buyer<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"UPDATE 6.00pm (UK): In a formal statement, Xbox told Eurogamer: “We don’t discuss individual personnel matters. We’re grateful…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":812773,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[59,86,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-812772","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-gb","tag-technology","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/812772","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=812772"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/812772\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/812773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=812772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=812772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=812772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}