Special Day
It's been a long 18 months for me. A lot has happened.
19 months ago, I was approached by Mike Zintel and Scott Holden to "come back home" to the .NET Compact Framework team. I was a little hesitant at first since I was thoroughly enjoying the incubation project I was involved in at that time, but the cookie they dangled in front of me was just to scrumptious to pass up.
.NET + Xbox 360
Yeah Baby. I'm there.
And besides, it really was like coming home. I have several very good personal friends on the team. This is the first product I worked on from day zero - I was actually on the team before Mr. Zintel and Mr. Holden way back in 1999.
There have been many special days over the last 18 months...
- My oldest daughter had her 6th birthday
- My middle daugher had her 4th birthday
- My son had his 1st birthday
- And I had my... well.. let's just say I'm older now.
- Fun and exciting days at Gamefest and GDC
- There was the day I lugged a Xbox 360 Alpha Kit into DavidWr's office and said - let's make this work
- There was the day where I watched Hello World run in DavidWr's office
- There was the day when we rendered our first 3D scene on the Alpha Kit
- There was the day where I showed J our work.
- There was the day that I became the proud launch day owner of a Xbox 360 (which is still running great today) via charity auction
- I recall the days when we got up and running on Beta and Final hardware development kits
- There were days when I churned out new code
- There were bug fixing days
- The day of our "Final" build
- One more bug fixing day
- The day of our "Final" build redux
- Vacation days in Hawaii where I, along with my very best college friends, witnessed our Purdue Boilermakers Football team fall short in a wild game against the University Hawaii Warriors (I'm still hoarse from the "cheering" in that game)
- Then there was the day our product got submitted to the Xbox Certification process
- And, most relevant to this blog... Today. The day I received the email that we passed certification and are signed off on the product.
I've now worked on a second product from day zero through ship of v1. Actually, now that I consider the timeline of things, we'd have to call it day < 0.
On Monday, December 11, XNA Game Studio Express will be made available. At around the same time, you will be able to browse Xbox Live, purchase a subscription to the XNA Creator's Club and download "my baby" along with the XNA Framework right to your very own 360. I'm totally exicted to hear about and see all of your creative efforts and home brew projects.
To quote a friend, this last year has been like "trying to drink from a fire hose". I've learned a ton about game developers, game development and the game industry. I've been very fortunate to be a part of this ride we now call XNA v1.
Rest assured we are only at the start of the road - there is no shortage of things to do. After a little bit of breather, we're already planning future releases and improvements.
In closing, here's a geek high-five shout out to all my colleagues on the NETCF and XNA teams.
101
Way to go - It's been a blast!
