At one point Microsoft was pegged by fans for not having enough exclusives for the Xbox. The company seemed to take those words to heart because during their conferenc at E3 last year they announced that they acquired 4 studios including Compulsion Games, Playground Games, Ninja Theory, and Undead Labs. Also, later in the year, at their X018 event in they announced the acquisition of couple more studios Obsidian Entertainment, and inXile Entertainment. With all these new developers, Microsoft aimed to give their players more content exclusive to the Xbox. Now, their newest studio, The Initiative, has been building its team in order to work on an unannounced project.
The studio already has a staff full of experienced developers such as lead designer Drew Murray, who is known for his work on Sunset Overdrive, William Archbell from 343 Industries, Daniel Neuburger who has done work for Square Enix’s on Rise of the Tomb Raider, Tom Shepherd a seasoned developer from Rockstar Games and many others. Now the team has added another talented developer to their studio to help on the project.
The company has now hired former Naughty Dog developer Robert Ryan. Ryan will take on the role as a senior systems designer at the studio for their yet to be revealed title. The news of the developer’s move were first noticed when changes were noticed to Ryan’s public LinkedIn profile. During his time at Naughty Dog, Ryan worked on titles such as Uncharted 3: Drakes Deception, Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End, The Last of Us, as well as The Last of Us: Part II which is still in development. The Initiative is trying to keep their development relatively small but still aims to make ambitious titles. It will be interesting to see what their talented studio has been working on whenever they choose to reveal it.