The Initiative Hires Rockstar Games’ Technical Director Tom Shepherd
Paolo Sirio 
The Initiative has hired Rockstar Games’ technical director Tom Shepherd, as revealed by Shepherd’s LinkedIn profile (and shared by our colleagues at Windows Central).
As Shepherd himself says on the social network, he has led “large programmer teams on projects such as Red Dead Redemption,” which makes for quite a relevant curriculum vitae.
We don’t have information about what The Initiative is currently working on, but that’s quite clear that the studio has been founded in order to allow Microsoft’s platforms to have more and more AAA single-player experiences.
Shepherd has been working at the developer since September and the studio itself is still hiring, after being revealed at E3 2018 in June, so there’s probably still a long way ahead before we can hear more about what they’re doing.
Anyway, as the first Santa Monica effort from Microsoft, the team led by former Crystal Dynamics’ head Darrell Gallagher has huge expectations to fulfill and the fact it’s hiring so many high profile staffers means there’s the will to do it.
We’ll update you as soon as more news about the team pop up on the Internet and, just in case, keep your eyes on the incoming X018 event – it’s still a bit early but we might hear more about the studio there.
Source: Windows Central
About the author
