[Bond]

Seamus Resigns from Microsoft

http://teamxbox.com/news.php?id=2920

Seamus Blackley, the co-creator of Microsoft Corp.'s Xbox video game console and widely seen as the project's father, has resigned from Microsoft, Microsoft and a Blackley spokeswoman said on Monday.

"He has left Microsoft to pursue other opportunities," said James Bernard, an Xbox spokesman at Microsoft . "We value his contributions."

The news comes just days after Microsoft said it would miss its fiscal year-end sales target for the Xbox by as much as 40 percent, a shortfall it blamed on weak sales. Those weak sales led to deep price cut in Europe and Australia last week.

Blackley's spokeswoman said he would not be ready to discuss details of the new venture for another two weeks at least, and she gave no indication as to what type of business the new company will pursue.

Blackley, a physicist by training, worked at the video game arm of Hollywood movie studio DreamWorks before joining Microsoft as head of the company's Advanced Technology Group. He has been one of the Xbox's public faces from the start, even going so far as to propose to his fiance during the Xbox's launch on Nov. 15 in Times Square in New York.

"You can talk about short-term problems now, but everyone's going to have problems," Blackley said. "We built momentum with the developers (in Japan) ... in a year-and-a-half that pays off."

Blackley worked at the video game arm of movie studio DreamWorks before joining Microsoft as head of the company's Advanced Technology Group. Before his stint at DreamWorks, he was also a noted designer of flight simulation games.

He has been one of the Xbox's public faces from the start, even going so far as to propose to his fiance during the Xbox's launch on Nov. 15 in Times Square in New York.

A book being released on Friday about the history of the Xbox project, "Opening the Xbox," by journalist Dean Takahashi, features a forward written by Blackley and centers in large part on the genesis of the project through him.

"This guy was the soul of the Xbox," Takahashi told Reuters. "You have to just wonder, why can't Microsoft hang on to a person like this?"

The book, and Blackley's resignation, come as the video game industry is in the midst of gearing up for the Electronic Entertainment Expo, or E3, which begins on May 21 in Los Angeles.

E3 is the video game industry's most important event of the year, with hardware makers discussing forecasts for the year and game publishers showing off their new titles. A good E3 showing is considered crucial to a company's financial success.

Industry executives, analysts and observers generally believe Microsoft is likely to cut the Xbox's price from $299 to $249 or even $199 at some point this year, though they are divided as to whether such a cut will come at E3 or later in the year, perhaps around September, a more traditional time for price cuts.

As for Blackley's future, he declined to rule out the possibility of developing games for platforms other than the Xbox. "The other platforms are interesting ... the PC in particular," he said.