Xbox Live leader Dan McCulloch is leaving after more than a decade at Microsoft.
“After 15 years at Xbox, I announced today that I would be leaving. I made so many friends, learned so much and truly had a blast! I’m extremely excited about the next opportunity in my career and I will be announcing that very soon, you all will be pumped! ;) Thank you!!!” he said in a tweet.
After 15 years at XBOX, I announced today that I would be leaving. I made so many friends, learned so much and truly had a blast! I'm extremely excited about the next opportunity in my career and I will will be announcing that very soon, you all will be pumped! ;) Thank you!!! pic.twitter.com/dcbhKCgn8f
— Dan McCulloch 🎮 (@McDanRandom) June 30, 2020
McCulloch didn’t say where he’s going, but from the announcement, it sounds like he could stay in gaming. On his LinkedIn page, McCulloch described his job as Xbox Live chief: “As the General Manager of Xbox Live I’m Currently focused on growing the Xbox Live community to 100M+ users across all devices, managing a P&L of over $1B and leading a cross-discipline team of service and user experience experts.”
Microsoft is at an important, transitional crossroad right now as it prepares to launch its next-generation console, the Xbox Series X, in time for the holiday season this year. McCulloch leaves Microsoft as Xbox Live is seeing historic numbers due to the coronavirus pandemic. In a recent third-quarter earnings call, the company announced it was getting record engagement numbers, with Xbox Live active users getting close to 90 million and Xbox Game Pass subscribers passing 10 million.
McCulloch started at Microsoft in May 2005 as a program manager, where he worked on partnerships with Yahoo, France Telecom, and AT&T. After that, he was involved with Kinect and handled integration and launch titles for the now-defunct peripheral.
He continued to work as a studio executive in the field of emerging products, hiring workers for unnamed Microsoft projects. In 2014, he was put on the Hololens team as a studio manager, and from there he worked on the augmented and virtual reality team. In 2017, he was named to his position as general manager of Xbox Live.
“I now run the Xbox live team that handles scale, reliability, new social features, safety and discovery across console, PC and Mobile,” he said at the time.
With his pedigree, McCulloch is an attractive hire for any game company.
