About Boris
Boris Schneider-Johne is one of Germanys "elder statesmen" of Videogames. Having started with C64 programming in the early eighties, he was editor and editor-in-chief at two of the most successful magazines in Europe, Power Play and PC Player. In 1986 he decided that these new point-and-click adventures could be translated and single handedly created a German version of "Murder on the Missisippi" (Activision). This led to a new job translating most LucasFilm Games titles, including "The Secret of Monkey Island", and producing localizations into French, Italian and even Hebrew. He also translated games and consulted for Electronic Arts, Interplay and Origin.
In 1997 he joined Microsoft to get away from videogames. That plan failed when he was hired into the Xbox team in 2001. Over a ten year period he held jobs like PR Manager and Product Manager, was deeply involved in the European launches of Xbox Live and Kinect (from both the technical and localization side) and ran launch campaigns for titles like Forza Motorsports. He also did video shows for Xbox Live under his gaming nickname KugelBlitz.
2011 saw the move out of Xbox to the Windows Marketing team, leading a Windows 7 upgrade campaign, the Windows 8 and finally the Windows 10 consumer launch. For the "PC Life Tour", a unique concept at retail with a PR twist, he received the "Circle of Excellence Platinum Award" in 2013, the highest employee recognition at Microsoft.
From July 2016 to Feburary 2022 he worked in the Microsoft GPS division as a Senior Partner Development Manager, helping software companies to use the cloud (Microsoft Azure) for Artificial Intelligence projects.
In September 2024 Boris, to his own surprise, went back to work for a Computergames Studio: CipSoft in Regensburg, Bavaria.
You can find Boris on IMDB and Mobygames and the german-language Wikipedia.
To contact Boris for speaking engagements or project consulting, please mail him at boris@dreisechzig.net
You’ve been an awesome member of the team,
someone who always spoke truth
and helped us navigate to where we are today in the industry.(Phil Spencer, CEO Microsoft Gaming)
- 1966: Born in Grevenbroich
- 1978: Learned Basic programming on a PET 2001
- 1986: Murder on the Missisippi (German translation, commercially released)
- 1987: Powerplay and Maniac Mansion
- 1989: Rainbow Arts and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
- 1990: Lucasfilm Games and The Secret of Monkey Island
- 1993: PC Player
- 1997: Microsoft, starting as Portfolio Planner in Market Research
- 2002: Xbox Launch (as PR Manager)
- 2003: Xbox Live Launch (as Produkt Manager)
- 2009: Podcast Spieleveteranen (Veterans of Gaming)
- 2010: Kinect Launch (as European product consultant), and then a move into the Windows-Team
- 2011: PC Life Tour for PR and Retail in twenty cities in Germany
- 2012: Windows 8 Launch and Microsoft Platinum Circle of Excellence Award
- 2015: Windows 10 Launch (marketing lead on upgrade campaigns)
- 2016: Move from Windows marketing to developer support and evangelism for Microsoft Azure
- 2017: Thimbleweed Park (my very last games translation)
- 2023: Intermezzo as Senior Product Manager for Administration Software
- 2024: Product Manager at CipSoft.