Portal designer Kim Swift has joined Xbox Game Studios to head up its cloud games business.

The news was revealed in a post on Twitter, in which the Xbox Publishing account welcomed Swift to the company, saying she would "accelerate our innovation and collaborate with independent studios to build games for the cloud." Her job title at Xbox is senior director of cloud gaming.

Swift's career started at Valve where she worked for over four years on the likes of Left 4 Dead and its sequel, as well as Portal. From there she moved to Airtight Games, before moving to Amazon.

In 2017 she was hired by EA Motive, where she stayed for almost three years, ahead of switching over to Google Stadia as a game design director for its first-party studio.

"Our team is focused on supporting global independent developers to build great games that will help us reach the 3 billion gamers around the world," head of Xbox Game Studios Publishing Peter Wyse said of Swift's hire.

"The three core pillars we follow in development are community, innovation and inclusivity. Today we're proud to share that Kim Swift is joining the team to help accelerate our innovation and collaborate with studios who are looking to join us on our journey to build cloud native games."