Microsoft just launched the Xbox One a few months ago, but the company is already looking at the future, as revealed by a new career opportunity ad posted by Redmond’s company, seeking an Industrial Designer.

The Xbox Industrial Design studio is building a world class in house team. We love entertainment. We live for building transformative entertainment experiences that resonate with consumers. We are looking for passionate designers who want to help us create next generation entertainment hardware for Microsoft.

Primary Responsibilities

This is a design position within the Xbox industrial design studio. You will be joining a team that drives vision and product development for Xbox hardware programs. The right candidate will be a “hands on” individual contributor that will bring thought leadership, inspirational creative output, and passion to the Xbox entertainment space. In essence, this position requires nothing less than a “super creator”.

As an industrial designer you will collaborate with design team and bring inventive ideas which will have large impact across the Xbox Entertainment Business.

We expect a spontaneous and innovative creative process that takes advantage of consumer insight harvesting, inspiration way-finding, 3d sketching, prototyping, thoughtful consideration of business needs, and understanding of technical considerations. Above all the candidate should have a portfolio that demonstrates the ability to design soulful product experiences that delight consumers.

The ad also lists “intrinsic passion for seamless hardware/software experiences” and “proven track record delivering award winning design” as requirements.
We shouldn’t really be surprised about Microsoft already starting to plan for the next generation. Hardware designers are never really idle, and at least preliminary research normally starts as soon as the previous generation of hardware is shipped; often ever earlier than that. You can pretty much bet your monthly wage that Sony and Nintendo are doing the same as I’m writing.

And before someone reaches that conclusion, this doesn’t in any way mean that Microsoft is planning to replace the Xbox One any time soon.

In addition to that, a second ad, seeking a Senior Software Development Engineer, clearly identifies the aim to improve the current game development tools used by first and third parties to create their titles on Xbox platforms.

The Xbox Platform Developer Experience team is hiring! We own the core development tools for the Xbox console platform, and we serve as a driving advocate for the end-to-end developer customer experience across the program. We are looking for an exceptional SDE to help us take game development tools to the next level.

Game developers, from AAA studios to Indie shops, have unique and exacting needs. Just think about the factors involved: Game titles are only growing in cost and complexity with each new generation. These days the projects will involve scores of engineers and hundreds of artists. They have budgets and production values that rival Hollywood blockbusters. They have 10’s of gigabytes of content, code tuned to get the utmost from our platform, and holiday release dates that won’t move.

The Xbox ecosystem only thrives if these partners succeed. Our goal is to help them make better games, faster.

Of course, career opportunities are just the tip of the iceberg, and they don’t equate to official announcements, so we might want to wait for clearer signals to start talking too loudly about the Xbox Two. As a matter of fact in this case “next generation” might even mean a future redesign of the Xbox One.

Yet, this is a clear indication that Microsoft’s Xbox division is looking towards the future and getting ready for what will come next.



Posted: Jul 10, 2014 12:26 pm
Related Forum: Xbox Forum

Source: http://www.dualshockers.com/2014/07/10/microsoft-already-hiring-to-develop-the-next-xbox-aims-to-improve-game-development-tools/