Key Xbox creative leaves company after almost 20 years

Xbox Series X
(Image credit: Microsoft)

Chris Novak, Xbox's head of resea🅠rch and development, has left the company after serving in v෴arious positions for nearly 20 years.

As head of R&D, a role he's held onto for five years, he was in charge of the user experience for all things gaming at 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Microsoft, including Xbox Li🤪ve, Game Pass, and cloud gaming. He also helped with research into first-party games.

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"Microsoft has been where I've gotten to learn in the crucible of gaming, from the world's best across the industry," Novak said. "I've got to se💎e it in its best times and its worst times. And that learning process, I tremendously treasure."

Novak was promoted to head of research and development during a strategic shift at Xbo🔯x. Just a few months prior, Xbox announced its Play Anywhere initiative at E3 2016, which allowed players to access their games on Xbox consoles and Windows PCs. 

"How big is that challenge when you’re trying to build experiences of entire games on a device that it was never designed for? That was the challenge at hand," Novak said. "We spent a huge amount of time as part of the xCloud effort, wi💫th the xCloud engineers, chasing that down and making sure that all the technology allowed us to render this output to any device. [...] That is one of my proudest moments."

Nov🔯ak ౠtold Polygon he won't be joining another company immediately as he wants time to refocus his life following the death of a person close to him. We wish him all the best.


After earning an English degree from ASU, I worked as a corporate copy editor while freelancing for places like SFX Magazine, Screen Rant, Game Revolution, and MMORPG on the side. I got my big break here in 2019 with a freelance news gig, and I was hired on as GamesRadar's west coast Staff Writer in 2021. That means I'm responsible for managing the site's western regional executive branch, AKA my home office, and writing about whatever horror game I'm too afraid to finis♍h.