Dean Takahashi plays with the HTC Vive Pre VR headset.
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Former Xbox manager joins HTC to run Vive content marketing

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 1 min

Rahul Sandil, a former Xbox manager who led community relations for the canceled Project Spark, has taken a job as the vice president of global marketing for the HTC Vive content store.

Rahul Sandil, community manager and engagement lead for Project Spark at Microsoft.
Rahul Sandil, community manager and engagement lead for Project Spark at Microsoft.

Based on his new LinkedIn page, that means he’ll run a team of marketers who are responsible for building the content for the Vive virtual reality headset. He’ll recruit VR content developers to the platform. The Vive is a high-end, PC-based VR system that aims to kickstart VR, which could be a $30 billion market by 2020, according to tech advisory firm Digi-Capital.

The Vive and its rivals Oculus Rift still need a breakout hit on the level of Pokémon Go, which has done wonders for the cause of VR’s cousin, augmented reality.

Sandil has served as an investor at Reloaded Holdings, marketer at Amazon Video Direct, and head of customer acquisition and engagement at Microsoft’s Xbox team, including its Project Spark virtual world. He also ran marketing at Reloaded Games.

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Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat at VentureBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.