Welcome to Ozymandias!
Hello, and welcome to Ozymandias.com!
My name’s Andre Vrignaud, and I work here at Microsoft in the Game Technology Group where I help manage our overall gaming platform strategy for Xbox and Windows. This basically means my job is to look out ahead one to two years and try to project where we, our competition, and the game industry in general will be. I take that thinking, the work many other folks do internally, and coalesce it into a roadmap that we take out to our game developers and publishers. Of equal importance, I also help take feedback we hear from those partners and make sure the right teams internally have it so we can react appropriately.
Why Ozymandias.com? Simply put, I often see a lot of speculation and uninformed commentary on the video game industry, game platforms, and technology on the web. While I will obviously never share anything confidential, just by nature of the fact that I’m paid to think about this stuff daily, my hope is that I’ll be able to shed light on some of the reasons things happen in the industry and spark some interesting conversations. Frankly, I also hope to learn more about what you want to see in the future of our gaming industry so I might be able to help make it happen.
As you might have guessed, I’m an Xbox and Xbox Live fan, and won’t pretend otherwise. My respect for those platforms is based upon years of working on similar attempts, as well as a huge appreciation of what Xbox has been able to deliver to the gaming community. That said, I’m also a gamer, and I’m not going to pretend I won’t have any of the other gaming platforms. I’ll be first in line to pick up a Nintendo Revol… <sigh> Wii, and will likely pickup a Playstation 3 as soon as there are games worth having. (I’m not convinced there will be anything at launch, and am even more skeptical as to the quality of Sony’s proposed online gaming network – more about that later. Besides, I’ll likely be picking up any multi-platform titles on the Xbox 360 to feed my achievement addiction.)
I run this blog on my own time and at my own cost. Anything I say on this blog is my own personal opinion, and is not read or approved by anyone before it is posted. Even though I work for Microsoft, not everything posted accurately reflects the views of my company, my management, partners, affiliates, or even my mother. I will do my best to ensure everything I post is accurate, but all posts are provided “AS IS” with no warranties, and confer no rights.
Please note that I cannot and will not comment on rumors, unreleased details, confidential data, or anything that is covered by my Microsoft NDA. Simply put, I love my job and this industry too much to ever betray that trust. Just want to be super-clear on that upfront as I’ll simply ignore any posts or emails seeking this sort of information.
That’s about it! I’m definitely interested in hearing your thoughts, so please feel free to comment on posts, and I’ll be sure to respond as appropriate. Thanks for reading, and good gaming! Oh, and feel free to look me up on Xbox Live, where I’m cleverly known as…
-Ozymandias
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