PlayStation talent acquisition lead joins Xbox Game Studios

Fiona Cherbak, formerly talent acquisition lead at Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) Worldwide Studios, has joined Microsoft as a recruiter for Xbox Game Studios.

Cherbak’s LinkedIn profile states she’s now talent acquisition lead at the Xbox maker, with a current focus on staffing up Los Angeles-based studio The Initiative.

Announced at E3 2018 but absent from this year’s show, The Initiative is led by Darrell Gallagher, the former head of development at Activision and Square Enix.

Cherbak worked at PlayStation for over three and a half years, during which she was “responsible for staffing God of War”, according to her online résumé.

Her previous position also included recruitment work for PlayStation’s San Mateo Studio, San Diego Studio and Bend Studio, among others.

With next-gen consoles on the horizon and Google preparing to enter the market with cloud gaming platform Stadia, SIE president and CEO Jim Ryan recently said exclusive “content is more important than ever before”.

With that in mind, the executive said SIE is considering studio acquisitions as it looks to grow its first-party development capabilities.

Microsoft has also invested heavily in first-party studios over the last few years, giving the company more time to focus on delivering quality products, according to Xbox head Phil Spencer.

Xbox Game Studios is now 15-strong, and Spencer said in June there may be more acquisitions to come – he’d like to purchase a Japanese studio – as Microsoft’s CEO and CFO “see gaming as an important growth category”.