A sign at Microsoft's upcoming Entertainment and Devices campus in Redmond.

If that sports bar weren't evidence enough, here's another clue that Microsoft's upcoming Entertainment and Devices complex will be like no other place on the company's Redmond campus. Permanent directional signs visible from the edges of the development site refer to the four big buildings under construction there not as buildings, but as "studios."

The names appear to break with a long tradition at Microsoft -- starting with Building 1 and now going well above Building 100.

The references to Studios A, B, C and D in the new complex seem to reflect Microsoft's desire to create a cutting-edge home for Xbox, Zune, and other divisions inside the Entertainment and Devices Divison. It's not clear how far the company will go with the "studio" concept when it comes to the interior design and layout of the buildings. A spokesman declined to comment on the choice of language. However, the names are consistent with the way many people in the video-game industry refer to their places of work.

No mere "building" or "office" could produce a hit game, apparently.

Less obvious is another reference on the signs. The buildings in the complex's central "Commons" area also won't be called buildings. Instead, the signs refer to them as the "Mixer" and "Submixer." We're assuming that has something to do with the social nature of those areas, but there's no official word on why Microsoft is going with those particular names.

For whatever it's worth, city planning documents did assign numbers 94 through 98 to the new buildings, and it's possible they'll retain those designations in internal Microsoft records. But publicly, it appears that plain building numbers just weren't cool enough.