Xbox has picked up a new hire: a former journalist at the New York Times. Seth Schiesel, the video game critic for the newspaper's Culture section, is leaving his post there and at the new media company Protocol to join Xbox as the company's director of executive communications.
Schiesel had been a contributing New York Times writer for almost two decades, first joining the paper in 1996 as a business reporter. He transitioned to the Culture department in 2005, where he primarily wrote critiques and commentary about video games and their culture. He more recently was a contributing editor for Protocol, where he focused again on video games and their related industries. But before all of this, Schiesel wrote for The Boston Globe.
He now joins Xbox as its director of executive communications, believing "gamers are a force for good." On Twitter, where Schiesel announced the news, he said that he will "continue to extend the joy and community of gaming to people everywhere" in his new position at Xbox.
Xbox has been on a bit of a hiring spree. Across multiple of the company's studios in 2020, Xbox hired talents like former Crystal Dynamics and Naughty Dog alumni, a developer who worked on Battlefield V and Uncharted 4, and others.