Ah, there's nothing like the crisp air of autumn to make you truly enjoy a re-org within your own team.

Yes, there's been a shuffle which now begs the big question of now what is Randy doing?

What doesn't change: XNA (Gaming), SDET Lead, technical role working on technology that extends the Xbox platform and give game studios killer features. As my grandmother used to put it: I still make toys. *g*

What has changed: the products that I work on.

For the last 18 months I've been working on technology that had plugged into either Xbox or Games for Windows titles, mostly working on tools for game developers and tests. I was focused on testing tools that would help make studio developers and tests work better and more efficiently as they created games. Take XSim as an example of the types of tools I've worked on. Beyond my team, there have been other teams in my group that were also working on other technologies for titles, but they focused on different end goals. One of these teams is a team known as Live Server and that's the team that I'll be joining soon.

Wait, so you're going to be working on Xbox Live now? Nope - they're a different team.

XNA LIVE Server is a team that develops both a framework and features based on that framework for multiple games, be it Xbox 360 or PC's. For example, PGR3 has an option for taking photos. As does Forza 2, PGR4, and other titles. See the trend there? My group has always had a team working on this type of technology - I just wasn't directly involved in it.

Until now.

What else has XNA LIVE Server done? Remember Gotham TV in PGR3? Upload any of your Ghost trails in PGR4? Tournaments and auctions in Forza 2? Give any people on your Friend's List a Piñata in Viva Piñata? Yep. We enable all of the infrastructure behind that. Every bit of it, including the calls within the game itself.

What is XNA LIVE Server going to do next? I'm not telling! ...but we do have some openings in our newly shuffled and growing team... interested? Drop me a line.

Does this mean all of my current projects dead? Nope: they're moving on to other homes and will continue to ship through their new owners - we're just shifting our focus from tools.

w00t.