He began in the video game music and sound industry in 1987 as a composer/sound designer and programmer for Williams Electronic Games in Chicago writing music and creating sound effects for pinball machines and coin operated video games. In 1989, Schmidt left Williams to become an independent consuptant under the company name of Schmidt Entertainment Technologies. While a consultant, he worked on over 100 console and arcade games. Schmidt is also the creator of the BSMT2000 audio DSP, which is used in various pinball games and video arcade machines. In 1998 Brian was recruited by Microsoft to become Program Manager for DirectSound and DirectMusic. From 1999-2008, Schmidt was the program manager of the Xbox Audio and Voice Technologies division at Microsoft and was responsible for much of the audio architexture for the Xbox and Xbox 360. He also created the startup sound for the original Xbox console.