Former Halo Infinite Head of Creative Joe Staten Leaves Microsoft

Game industry veteran Joe Staten is leaving Microsoft, a company spokesperson confirmed to IGN. Shortly after that, Staten himself commented on the news on his Twitter account, thanking everyone at Xbox and mentioning he would be going on a new adventure.

Joe Staten was recently moved from 343 Industries, where he helped ship Halo Infinite as Head of Creative, back to the Xbox publishing division where he had worked for several years on games like Insomniac’s Sunset Overdrive, Armature’s ReCore, Remedy’s Quantum Break, Asobo’s Zoo Tycoon: Ultimate Animal Collection, Playful’s Super Lucky Tale, Undead Labs’ State of Decay 2, Sumo Digital’s Crackdown 3, Forgotten Empires’ Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition, Asobo’s Microsoft Flight Simulator, and DONTNOD’s Tell Me Why.

Before that, though, Joe Staten did a very long stint at Bungie, where his credits stretch back all the way to 1999’s Myth II: Chimera, an add-on for the real-time tactics game Myth II: Soulblighter. He also worked on 2001’s action game Oni in some capacity, though his star began to rise with Halo: Combat Evolved, where he took on the role of Cinematics Director, writing scripts for the in-game movies. By the time Halo 3 launched in 2007, Staten was credited as Writing Director, and in 2009’s ODST, he took on the role of Creative Director. For several years, he worked on Destiny as Story Director, though he left Bungie about a year before its release in 2014.

Joe Staten also found success as a writer of Halo novels. Publisher Tor Books released his Halo: Contact Harvest book in 2007. The novel is set 27 years before the events narrated in Combat Evolved, at the time of humankind’s first contact with the Covenant alien race, featuring Avery Johnson (an important character in the Halo games) as the protagonist.

In December 2015, Joe Staten published another much shorter novella in the Halo universe called Shadow of Intent. Only available in a digital format, it is focused on the Sangheili warrior Rtas ‘Vadum, who is pulled into a conspiracy to destroy the Sangheili race.