Microsoft, Valve veteran Jason Holtman becomes head of platform at Oculus VR

Jason Holtman, a veteran of Microsoft and Valve, is now Oculus VR's head of platform, according to a post on the virtual reality company's official blog.

Holtman will take charge of business development and partnership at Oculus "with a focus on building the world’s best developer and player VR ecosystem." In the introductory post, he writes about his love of Battlezone, the green-and-white wireframe Atari game from the early 80s.

"Battlezone is widely regarded as one of the first VR games, and looking back, those mountains still excite me," he wrote. "I want to fly, walk across alien landscapes, and nose around the Great Pyramids. And that’s the most telling thing about VR: the possibilities are obvious, immediate, and endless.

"So, I’m humbled to become a part of this team. I’m not one of the pioneering scientists or engineers in virtual reality, but I am one of the people that can’t stop grinning every time I see something new inside the headset, and I’m looking forward to helping shape the transformative experiences that inspire the next generation of developers.”

Holtman joined Valve in 2005. As director of business, he worked with developers to bring their games to Steam. He left the company in 2013 and joined Microsoft, where he said he was working on "making Windows a great platform for gaming and interactive entertainment." A Microsoft spokesperson confirmed to Polygon in February 2014 that he left the company after six months.

For more on the latest in virtual reality's ascendency in video games, be sure to read our GDC 2014 StoryStream and check out our impressions of the Oculus Rift HD prototype below.