Today I announced my pending departure from Microsoft, so I will no longer be an Xbox 360 or Zune insider, but someone who can experience it from the outside. I've had an amazing run there for almost 9 years: Xbox 360, Zune, Crimson Skies, The Beast, MechWarrior 4, and SQL Server 2000 & 7.0. I'm proud of the work I've done, but I look forward to what the team does moving forward. I get to be a consumer of Xbox 360 and Zune now!

 

It's extremely exciting for me to move to a new chapter in my professional life, but it's also sad to have to say goodbye to some great people. I will miss many of them, but I'm sure we'll be crossing paths again. The world is amazingly small when it comes to professional circles.

 

So what's next? I can't say. But once I can, I'll be posting it right here!

 

All for now...

I'm out of the country so it's hard to make a real post on this, but the details of the upcoming Spring update have been released. I'm really excited about some of these, especially the "small" improvements like the Achievement notification, joinable presence icon, and the name of the game in the tray. Those things, in particular, were ones that a small group of people were very passionate about and did whatever they needed to make it happen. These were also something that we felt was very important to our customers. What do you think?

 

That's all for now until I'm back, at which point I'll spend a little more time talking about the user experience additions/improvements that's coming this Spring.