Michael Vines worked for Microsoft and Rare during the lead up to the Xbox 360 launch, including putting in good effort to make Perfect Dark Zero the system’s most appealing debut game.

E3 2005: Michael Vines and Paul Gale

I met Michael at E3 2005 in Microsoft’s booth, as we talked all about the Xbox 360 software that will be available on day one as well as the important Perfect Dark Zero article that I wrote for Microsoft. The article in particular was my take on what ideas I thought Rare could implement into this game. Michael had previously read and was supportive of my article, and that definitely meant a lot. To know that some of what I wrote might have held a bit of influence to a game coming from a company like Rare was very rewarding.

On a personal note, I do wish that Microsoft read more into what some of my ideas entailed…however, some of the tech that I came up with then, might have lead (even a little bit) to the eventual Kinect. That’s speculative on my part, but some of the similarities are quite strong.

Back to Michael, he might be doing other work these days, but I still support him and wish him well. Best of luck.