Xbox Live mastermind joins Amazon

One of the key personnel behind the creation of Xbox Live has left his position at Microsoft for a new role in retail.

According to his blog, Andre Vrignaud has joined the team at Amazon. While he hasn’t revealed his new position, it is hinted that it will be heavily focused on gaming.

Vrignaud joined Microsoft in 2002 and was responsible for the gaming platform strategy across Xbox, Xbox Live and windows. More recently, he has been working on Microsoft’s latest mobile push with Windows Phone 7.

I’m excited about where Microsoft is going in the next few years as they look to reinvent digital entertainment, but I’m also obviously very intrigued about what Amazon is looking to do,” said Vrignaud.

It’s been an amazing eight years at Microsoft. I’ve always valued the passion the Microsoft brings to identifying what the right thing is to do around a variety of topics for developers, publishers, consumers and platforms… particularly the Xbox Live team.”