While both of those products had successful launches, it sounds like Sonos is getting ready to do a pivot of sorts. In his blog post confirming the layoffs, Sonos CEO specifically cited the Amazon Echo as new competition for the company in the connected speaker space and said that Sonos was looking into how to bring "voice-enabled music experiences into the home." He acknowledged that was new territory for the company and implied that the layoffs could be due to that transition. While there's no word on why Whitten left, it's entirely possible that the change is related to this new area of focus for Sonos.

Prior to his time at Sonos, Whitten was the chief product officer for Xbox and oversaw the (somewhat troubled) launch of the Xbox One. Since he left, Phil Spencer took over and guided Microsoft through some tough times and refocused the console on its core gaming experiences. Whether Whitten ends up back in the games industry, the tech industry in general or something entirely new remains to be seen. Whitten hasn't posted on his Twitter account since March 15th, and his LinkedIn and Twitter profiles still say he's working for Sonos.