Microsoft Factory Tour: the Xbox Building

A full-size elephant is perhaps not on the list of things you’d expect to come across on a software company’s campus. But then again…

If you ever visited Microsoft’s new building for the Xbox team then you surely must know where’s I’m going with this, but if not, make sure to watch the video embedded at the bottom of this article.

The video was posted by Microsoft’s Steve Clayton, which is now authoring posts for the recently launched “Next at Microsoft” blog.

Clayton is one of my all-time favorite Microsoft bloggers, and of course, those already familiar with his old blog know that he will make “Next at Microsoft” a top destination in terms of must-read blogs from the Redmond company’s employees.

“One of the topics we’ll be covering here on Next is a look behind the scenes at Microsoft. I’m keen to show you some places you may have heard about but never really seen – the Microsoft Home for example,” he stated.

“There are a host of other places too, some of which even Softies don’t know exist. The hardware labs, the model shop and many many more. Think of it as a Factory Tour of Microsoft.”

In the video below you will be able to see Tina Summerford, Senior technical Evangelist, and Larry Hryb, the director of programming for the Microsoft gaming network Xbox Live.

Together they give an impressive tour of the Xbox building on the Redmond campus highlighting some of the strong points of what’s it like to work at Microsoft.

“My good friends at Channel 9 have been pointing their cameras in to some of these places – they started out with Xbox and Larry Hryb (aka Major Nelson) and actually went waaaay beyond just the Xbox building,” Clayton added.

“They took a look at The Commons which I’ll cover in more detail in a future post – as Tina says in the video, that place is like being in Disneyworld. We have a ton more places to show you so stay tuned but meantime, go check out the Xbox building.”