Employer: Microsoft (Volt)
Responsibilities: Community Management, Photography, Writing, Blog Administration

• Microsoft Keynote Photography
• Random Community Photography
• Gamerscoreblog Event Coverage Post

Microsoft Keynote Speech

Random Community Shots

Original Post

Yesterday was a crazy day for the whole community team. Not only did we have to make sure that the news got out on time, but we were busy escorting community members to meetings, taking photos and shooting video.

Everything started off with the Microsoft Press Briefing at sort of around 10:30ish AM. Don Mattrick, John Schappert and Shane Kim took the stage and talked us through the New Xbox LIVE Experience, our outlook for the next year and even took part in some goofy role playing to showcase “You’re in the Movies”. Also, the singer, Duffy, sang for us as Lips was shown in the background.

The New Experience consists of:

• A completely new interface
• Personalized Avatars
• Eight person party system (Ohhh Yeahhhh!)
• Ability to access the Marketplace on the Web
• Xbox LIVE Primetime (online party games, some with live hosts. Play against your friends and others on LIVE)
• Support for different screen resolutions (16X10 over VGA or HDMI, and support for 1440×900 or 1680×1050)

For more, check out the press release and Marc Whitten’s letter.

Other exciting news was the announcement of a partnership with Netflix. Gold members who sign up for a Netflix account and you will have access to a library of movies that can be streamed to straight to your Xbox.

For more info on this, check out the press release.

Games talked about included:

• Final Fantasy XIII
• Gears of War 2
• Fable II
• Too Human
• Resident Evil 5
• Fallout 3
• Lips
• Guitar Hero World Tour
• Rock Band 2
• You’re in the Movies
• Scene It? Box Office Smash
• Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts
• DanceDanceRevolution
• UNO RUSH
• Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise
• 1 vs. 100
• Galaga Legions
• Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2
• Portal: Still Alive
• South Park
• Grand Theft Auto IV – Downloadable Episodes
• Halo Wars
• Infinite Discovery
• The Last Remnant
• STAR OCEAN: The Last Hope

For more details, check out the press release.

After the briefing, Chris, John and I headed over to the Sheraton with some community members to attend a de-briefing by Marc Whitten. Many questions were asked about the upcoming new Xbox experience. Believe it or not, we don’t always agree with everything that happens on the console and we were glad to hear some of our own opinions echoed at the meeting. We also wanted to make sure that all of the amazingly cool stuff didn’t get overlooked and there was plenty of that talked about – Did I mention the 8 person party system?

The whole team met up at a Starbucks for a small community get-together. It was good to hear impressions of the announcements from even more community members.

We had about an hour of downtime before getting some dinner and heading over to the Gears of War 2 reception.

Chris, Nelson and I stayed later than our boss-people (some people need more sleep than others) and managed to catch some pretty sweet photos and video of all of the guests. This was sort of a special event because it was the first time many of the voice-actors involved in the game had actually been together in the same place. You could definitely feel their excitement to see each other. Zach Levi and Josh Gomez also showed up to get their hands on the new game. These were two of the most hilarious guys I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting. And they’re not “those guys who show up to have a photo taken”, they’re real gamers. Josh actually lent his voice to some of the characters in Bioshock. We also bumped into Godfree, Parris Lilly, Nick Puleo, Bobby Blackwolf, Richard Mitchell, Dustin Burg, Eric Bush and that Ron Workman guy.

After we all captured what we needed, we headed back to the hotel. I sat down and looked through my shots but realized my eyes weren’t really open. I collapsed in bed fully clothed.

Bring on Day 2!