There comes a time when you look at your world and you say, its time to move on. The memories are great and it was a good experience but something has changed. The Bug triage is not as interesting as it used to be, the conference calls have lost that special meaning, the company meeting just seems silly and  the confidence and optimism for the company is just harder to fathom. I also feel that I know more than the many of the people who are senior to me as well which is a definite signal that its time.

Both my co-blogger Neema and myself  have already left MS months ago and weeks ago respectively. I join the ranks of the 5+ years of ex-Microsoft folks to "do something different." I could still post here but most likely I will post here at YumYum blog.

I will follow my passion for gaming in Asia further in Beijing. What started for me as a Regional Xbox Business Manager in Singapore will now morph into something else in China for games and entertainment. My friend Paul Denlinger sums it up best in his blog post over at ChinaVortex.

America used to be a much more entrepreneurial country, now it is overly regulated, overly expensive, overly specialized, overly structured and overly corporate. In order to be competitive again, the entire society and culture will have to make major adjustments. The road will not be a smooth one.

That is why the smart entrepreneurs, like Gage, start their businesses in China.

In this new globalized world, China has become what America used to be.

 

 China has become the New California for Americans...and there are many of us ex-MS folks already here in China forming companies and making the local ones better.

 

so, goodbye. 

 

My goodbye MS letter that i sent out.  (the second time I left) 

Good luck and good bye. Its been an honor working with you all and I hope we can work together again in the future. I really like some of the things that MS does and stands for and I hope you can all continue to make that happen. MS probably has the largest number of smart people in any company anywhere – just ask any of us ;)

 

Thank you DaveVR, Harry Shum, Alan Bowman and Sun Shaw for letting me follow my passion for games. Most of all I would I would like to thank my team in Casual Games both here and there for making this the best year of them all.

 

My last day is Sept 2 while most of you are in the Thailand offsite. Feel free to have a beer for me at Soi Cowboy with some of the Katooey

 

Take care

 

Frank Yu

 

 

If you want to connect:


Linkedin

http://www.linkedin.com/in/frankyu

and of course facebook

 http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=607648416  

You can find me and other former colleagues on FaceBook in the MS Alumni in Asia Group

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=5705900361

 

or at the Beijing Zhonguancun Technology Startup Group

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=5504465643

 

For those of you on the China Gaming newsletter, I may continue it here

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=5228767003

 

 

The mandatory Recap – yes, I’m damn proud of these

 

Its been an interesting 4 years 11 months. This is the second time that I have left.

7 x managers., 9 x different teams, 2 x countries.

I’ve been an FTE, a VR, a CS, an FTC and an FTE again

 

1 x Console Launch of Xbox V1 in 4 countries (3 price drops in region, 4 bundles created)

Hong Kong,

Singapore,

Korea,

Taiwan

HED Sales and Marketing oversight on India and China

 

1 x MS Patent for Hierarchical Carousel Interface

http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PG01&s1=%22hierarchical+carousel%22&OS="hierarchical+carousel"&RS="hierarchical+carousel  

 

1 x Publication

Kelvin Cheng, David Vronay, Frank Yu: Interaction design for the media pc.

77th ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST 2004 Symposium),

 Association for Computing Machinery, Inc. (ACM), James A. Landay (Program Chair),

Companion to Proceedings, pp 5-6. 2004. ISBN 1-58113-957-8.

 

3 x Shipit Awards in 3 years Thanks Todd and Paul

l          IE7

l          Media Center TV (smart thumbnail)

l          Media Center Extender (Transrating)

 

PM for ATC’s first Tech Transfer in 2004 . Hierarchical Carousel User Interface Design from MSRA ACID to Windows Shell Team

 

1.5 Games Shipped

 

PM for ATC’s first game, first MS game team in China, (first consumer product) designed and created in China for global distribution (one of the fastest games shipped from design to RTM)

 

1) Rock Paper Scissors with the first Messenger game sim ship in 33 countries. Thank Debbie, Bulent, and Hakim for being our pilot on your phases

Austria

Switzerland*

Germany

Australia

Canada*

UK

Ireland

Malaysia

New Zealand

Philippines

Singapore

United States*

South Africa

Argentina

Chile

Spain

Latin America

Mexico

Belgium*

France

Indonesia

Italy

Japan

Korea

Netherlands*

Brazil

Turkey

Taiwan

Hong Kong

China

India

 

l       game released in multiple languages in this market

 

2) ZPA Chess AI Integration

First AI integration of a multiplayer Web Chess game into a single player game for MS Casual Games

 

 

 

My ThinkWeek papers (FTEs only)

 

Why MS should consider acquiring Facebook (brand new – I won’t see the feedback)

http://thinkweek2/Details.aspx?subId=1507

 

ACORN: MS Alumni and Seed Venture Initiative (brand new – I won’t see the feedback)

http://thinkweek2/Details.aspx?subId=1508

 

Eight of the Billion Users: Decoding China’s Next Generation  ( A winter 2007 and Ad Astra favorite) (BillG commented)

http://thinkweek2/winter2007/details.aspx?subId=1150  

 

Connecting One Billion Gamers: Creating a unified entertainment experience in China  (BillG commented)

http://thinkweek2/winter2007/Details.aspx?subId=1151  

 

One Billion Gamers Service Pack 1: A high level action plan for redefining entertainment in China (BillG commented)

http://thinkweek2/winter2007/Details.aspx?subId=1203

 

Opening the Online Pandora’s Box: Unleashing 4 structured derivative based services in the online market (this was before anyone heard of the #1 game in China Zhengtu Networks)

http://thinkweek2/winter2007/Details.aspx?subId=1208

 

One Billion Gamers: Redefining Digital Play in China (BillG commented)

http://thinkweek2/spring2006/Details.aspx?subId=708

 

The Light Revolution

http://thinkweek/Winter2005/Lists/Papers/DispForm.aspx?ID=319

 

1 x Blog

http://blogs.msdn.com/acid49/default.aspx