After leaving HP last month to pursue other opportunities, no one was really sure where Rahul Sood would end up. Few would probably have guessed that he'd find himself in Redmond, but today the founder of VoodooPC announced that he has taken a new job working for Microsoft.
Sood will join the Interactive Entertainment Business as the as the GM for System Experience. What exactly this means is open for discussion, but it's reminiscent of the vague position he held at his former employer that involved working across seemingly all of HP's business groups.
What we do know is that the IEB - currently headed up by former EA exec Don Mattrick - covers the Xbox 360, Xbox Live, Zune, Mediaroom, Microsoft Hardware and Microsoft Game Studios business units. With his experience in gaming hardware, intimate knowledge of the enthusiast community and flair for the dramatic - not to mention his thoughts on Xbox gaming - it seems like there's plenty that Sood could get involved in at Microsoft.
There's also the fact that, upon leaving HP, he assured followers that he would only be satisfied when he was making "remarkable difference", meaning that the software giant has probably tempted him with a major project to sink his teeth into.
This is also a pretty big deal for Microsoft, which has lost a number of high-profile and influential executives from the EIB over the past few years, including Peter Moore and, more recently, J Allard and Robbie Bach.
Although he didn't have much to say on the matter, Sood noted that he'll be "working on some really....really...really cool stuff come January 2011". This could mean absolutely anything, but we're sure that he'll be more than happy to share it with the world soon enough.
