Xbox Exec Peter Moore Leaving Microsoft for EA

Citing 'personal reasons' the face of Microsoft's Xbox system, Peter Moore, will be leaving the company as of the end of the month. The official press release just states that Moore is moving back to Northern California. Kotaku actually brought up the story as a rumour a few hours ago; their source pointed to EA's sports division as Moore's new home. Moore's replacement as head of the Interactive Entertainment Business in Redmond is Don Mattrick, himself a former EA president. "Mattrick was the founder of Distinctive Software Inc., which operated as a private company from 1982 until its merger with EA in 1991. Mattrick held various senior positions within EA, most recently as president of Worldwide Studios, until his resignation in February 2006. In February 2007, Mattrick began working with the Entertainment and Devices Division at Microsoft as an external advisor. 'Peter has contributed enormously to the games business since joining Microsoft in 2003 and we are sad to see him go,' said Robbie Bach, president of Entertainment and Devices Division at Microsoft ... While Peter will certainly be missed, we are delighted to have one of the industry's most talented and passionate veterans on board to lead the business.'"

Comments

as the old saying goes

[Anonymous Coward]

a rat knows when a ship is sinking.

Re:as the old saying goes

[aichpvee]

So when is he getting the Madden tattoo?

Billion Dollar Repair Bill's First Victim

[Anonymous Coward]

Will Microsoft pull the plug on the whole Xbox mess? With the billion dollar 360 defect fiasco the Xbox project is now around 7 billion in losses. Anyone who reads Microsoft employee discussion boards knows that the Xbox has become the company's most hated product and the calls for heads to roll after the shocking billion dollar repair bill were loud and clear from everyone. It should be a surprise that Moore got the boot out the door.

After all that money wasted in the console market Microsoft has failed to gain any ground or attract gamers outside of the first Xbox's userbase. The 360 is just as dead as the first Xbox in Japan. In Europe the 360 is doing very poorly everywhere except the UK. And the US the 360 is doing roughly the same. Those who think Microsoft doesn't care about billions in losses and are willing to throw money forever at the Xbox project are going to be in for a huge shock when Microsoft axes the whole Xbox mess and returns to focus on migrating pc developers over to Vista exclusive games.

Hardware is clearly an area where Microsoft has no business trying to compete in.

Re:Billion Dollar Repair Bill's First Victim

[MemoryDragon]

Microsofts business practice usually is, if they cannot make a significant inroad with the third iteration of something then they slowly pull out. Axing something usually does not happen overnight.

Re:Billion Dollar Repair Bill's First Victim

[Mr_Silver]

Hardware is clearly an area where Microsoft has no business trying to compete in.

Not true, they make very nice mice and keyboards.

Regarding their failure in the console market, it is worth pointing out that no-one new has entered that arena and succeeded in any way since Sony arrived with the Playstation. There have been plenty that failed or exited altogether (Phantom, Nokia and Sega spring to mind).

If Microsoft are unable to enter the market and do well with the billions they've thrown at it, then I don't really hold up much hope for anyone else. As such, I can only assume we'll be stuck with just Sony and Nintendo in the years to come...

Re:Billion Dollar Repair Bill's First Victim

[pieisgood]

where's your proof that the console is doing poorly? from what I can see is that the defect is the only thing wrong with the xbox360. From what I can see in sales charts, the 360 is doing better than the PS3 on a month to month sales basis. It currently has the largest developer support and has the ability to play online games with PC users. If you really think you're correct, then I suggest you do your research to make sure anyway. Considering the only consoles that are selling extremely well are the PS2 and the DS.

and hey check it out! proof!
http://swivel.com/graphs/show/17654441

Re:Billion Dollar Repair Bill's First Victim

[Xest]

I don't know how people count to 7 billion in your world, but apparently it's quite different to how people count to 7 billion in the real world.

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?st ory=13698

This article is before the 1 billion put aside to resolve the RROD problem of course, but I'm not entirely convinced that $315million + $1billion equals $7billion still.

Still, this isn't the first time an anonymous coward has come forth and made near identical daft, unfounded claims with pretend knowledge of the super-secret Microsoft forum club insider information, so I'm guessing we should assume you're to be a regular troll now? I'm not terribly sure how you can possibly even begin to claim the 360 is the most hated product amongst Microsoft employees, even if said employees did hate some Microsoft product or another, let's face it, Microsoft has a whole lot more crappy, unsuccessful, uninteresting stuff to hate than the 360, the Zune for example?

Re:Billion Dollar Repair Bill's First Victim

[Anonymous Coward]

The 360 is getting creamed by the PS3 worldwide. And that was before the 100 dollar price cut for the PS3.

The 360:

30-40 percent defect rate - as of yet there is no sign that anything Microsoft has done can fix the failures
Disc scratching - class action lawsuit in the works
The loudest console ever
50 dollar a year charge to play
No dedicated servers for games like Halo or Gears of War
Graphics look terrible in games like Halo 3 and Forza 2
Ripoff upgrades - 200 dollars for a 100 dollar drive whereas you can put any store bought drive you want in a PS3
Backwards compat a complete joke

Yeah, great console Microsoft!

Re:Billion Dollar Repair Bill's First Victim

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft was around 5 billion in losses when they canceled the first Xbox production.
They were around a billion to billion and a half in losses before the defect admission.
Add on the billion dollar defect charge and you are easily in the 7 to 8 billion in losses.

And they are under heavy pressure to drop the price and the charge for online play. The entire Xbox project can easily hit 9 billion down the drain by the time Microsoft stops making the console.

Re:Billion Dollar Repair Bill's First Victim

[The PS3 Will Fail]

"And that was before the 100 dollar price cut for the PS3."

Except there really wasn't a 100 dollar price cut. Sony has mis-managed the PS3 at every possible turn. Their non-price cut is just another example.

Re:Billion Dollar Repair Bill's First Victim

[Anonymous Coward]

Got a link to this 5.5 billion loss?

All I can find is further articles backing up the current losses and other articles pointing out that Sony's games division is suffering double the losses of MS'

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Xbox-Sinks-into-a-1 -26-Billion-Hole-30776.shtml

http://kotaku.com/gaming/hms-playstation/playstati on-biz-may-post-2-billion-loss-260674.php

Well, I did find one link but it was from a random poster in an anti-XBox 360 forum thread on playstation.com, hardly the most authoritize source.

Re:Billion Dollar Repair Bill's First Victim

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know if anyone has an exact figure but a quick bit of googling shows large numbers of stories pegging the first Xbox's losses in the four to five billion range.

Re:Billion Dollar Repair Bill's First Victim

[Simon Garlick]

where's your proof that the console is doing poorly?

Microsoft has invested $24B+ in Xbox in order to make a cumulative $5B+ LOSS so far -- and that's not counting the $1-1.5B that analysts estimate the warranty extension will cost. "Negative 24 billion" plus "negative 5 billion" plus "negative 1 point something billion" equals "doing poorly".

Personally, I'd be interested to see a record of stock transactions by IEB execs over the past few months.

Re:Billion Dollar Repair Bill's First Victim

[Osty]

And they are under heavy pressure to drop the price and the charge for online play.

Under heavy pressure from whom? Xbox Live subscriptions are up, beating projections (I think Moore said they crossed the 7 million subscriber mark at E3). The only people I've seen who care about the price of Live are those coming from an environment without a cohesive online story (Sony fanboys, mostly).

On the price of the console, the most expensive Xbox 360 is still cheaper than the cheapest PS3. The consoles are still selling well, though they did just barely miss the quarter's sell-through numbers. Sure, people would like for the price to drop, but that's not going to stop most people who want the console. There are enough great games already out and coming soon that the price of a 360 is easily justified (in comparison, the PS3's price even at $500 is very difficult to justify due to lack of games). A price drop probably will come along, most likely at the same time manufacturing switches over to the cheaper 65nm process. But if it doesn't come, it's not going to hurt Microsoft too much, and the ability to finally make a profit on the console may easily outweigh the few gamers they won't get due to price.

Re:Billion Dollar Repair Bill's First Victim

[UnknowingFool]

The OP is referring to the entire Xbox project which has not made any profits since the beginning. While MS has not released detailed numbers for the Xbox alone, the division that Xbox belongs has lost something on the order of 7 billion. With Xbox being a large part of that division, it is assumed that the majority of the losses are due to the Xbox. The division was scheduled to break even sometime this year; however, he latest repair bill will set the division back further financially. While Sony eventually recooperated its initials losses on the PS2, Xbox has never been solvent.

Re:Billion Dollar Repair Bill's First Victim

[vertinox]

Not true, they make very nice mice and keyboards.

But they've been making millions on their mice years before they even released Windows 95. Its not something they simply came up with recently.

Re:Billion Dollar Repair Bill's First Victim

[WhatHappenedToTanith]

I must say that the microsoft mice which I have are so good that I have been using them for close to 9 years now (2 computers) and will get another microsoft mouse if one ever breaks. They are comfortable, responsive and have lasted longer than all the other mice I have ever owned combined. Cant stand the 'natural' keyboards though, but that simple statement might lead to a flamewar so I should validate people by stating that I do know plently of people who still swear by them :)

Re:Billion Dollar Repair Bill's First Victim

[ucblockhead]

The Wii isn't selling extremely well?

Re:Billion Dollar Repair Bill's First Victim

[Fanboys_Suck_Dick]

Where are you getting your figures on how much money was invested in the Xbox from? A link would be helpful. Thanks.

Re:Billion Dollar Repair Bill's First Victim

[Comen]

If you only look at money through console sales that might be true, but what about money from GAMES and assessories,merchandise also online sales, they have movies and all sorts of online content to download for money.
If you really think that Microsoft will pull out of a market that they are doing well in, as far as out selling sony, no matter if they are losing 5 billion, when you look at what they have to risk my losing this battle, they know they really need to control the game market somehow, it is going to make more money than music here soon, and I am sure not long after more than movies! why would they give up a shot at owning a peice of that market for a few billion?
Not to mention microsoft has been creating middle ware from cable/telco compaines for IPTV and all that and the console in the users living room is a dream for them.
They want to own you living room, they want to own the content you by through there middleware be it the XBOX or the TVBOX you get through cable.
Microsoft knows what Google knows that soon the company that owns the sale of information and entertainment in to your home will be in a very good place.
Thinking that MS will quite the console market is thinking they do not look 10 steps down the road, and I would agree that sometimes they do not, but in this market they have shown that they are very serious about the XBOX, and I am sure they know why, there will soon be so much money in this market, tehy games and the internet on the TV sales of movies etc, tehy will not just give up that fast.
After all 5 billon to them is like 5 dollars to you/me anyway.

Call me a fan boy if you like, but I am just trying to be real about this, and not underestimate Microsoft.

Re:Billion Dollar Repair Bill's First Victim

[alvinrod]

"Under heavy pressure from whom? Xbox Live subscriptions are up, beating projections (I think Moore said they crossed the 7 million subscriber mark at E3). The only people I've seen who care about the price of Live are those coming from an environment without a cohesive online story (Sony fanboys, mostly)."

Xbox Live is certainly a supperior offering to anything found on the Playstation or Wii consoles, but I think the numbers have beed fudged a little bit. Because there are two different Xbox Live service levels, one of which is free, it makes me wonder exactly how many of these subscriptions are paid for and how many are silver members. The Nintendo DS supposedly has had around five million unique users connect to their online service. There have been about five million virtual console sales on the Wii to date.

However, these numbers really don't tell us much useful information. For starters, we don't know how many of those Xbox Live subscriptions are gold memberships. We also don't know the amount of content purchased or arcade game sales either. Without more information Xbox Live could be pulling in money hand over fist, or it could be something that's barely scraping by. The Nintendo DS number doesn't tell us how many regular online users there are. For all we know the vast majority tried it out a few times and then quit playing online. The Wii numbers don't give us a good idea of the number of unique users that have purchased a game. I've bought around ten VC titles personally and if that's how it generally plays out, maybe only half a million Wii owners buy VC games.

Without better information it's pretty stupid to say that Xbox Live is a huge success for Microsoft. Unless they produced a report on exactly whith parts of their gaming division are profitable, we can't really determine if Xbox Live is a money maker or if it's bleeding money just like most of the division. In 2004, they had surpased the one million subscriber mark, which is significant because all subscriptions were paid at that time. However it still didn't indicate whether or not that was total subscriptions or active users. However, even if they're not making money from gold memberships, they still do sell arcade games and other online content now, but I haven't seen any figures on this information to indicate how successful it's been.

Keep in mind that any numbers that come from a company are usually deceptive in some way or another.

Re:Billion Dollar Repair Bill's First Victim

[Mprx]

I've had the same MS Natural Keyboard for 8 years now and it's still going strong. I disassemble it for cleaning every so often (sometimes even taking the membranes out), but it gets heavy use and no signs of wearing out.

Re:Billion Dollar Repair Bill's First Victim

[badasscat]

If you only look at money through console sales that might be true, but what about money from GAMES and assessories,merchandise also online sales, they have movies and all sorts of online content to download for money.

Yeah, and it all gets reported on the same quarterly balance sheets.

Sheesh, some of you guys act like MS is hiding a bunch of profits under their mattress or something. They have to report all their profit and loss; it's all public. Go read it yourself; Yahoo finance has it all for free if you don't have a brokerage account anywhere.

The fact is MS was $5.5 billion in the hole by last quarter, is losing around $220 million every single quarter on its entertainment division, and has now taken a $1.1 billion charge on top of that. These are facts that have been publicly reported by MS in their SEC filings. There's no hidden profit there. There's no "well yeah, if you only count this or that". That's counting everything.

Re:Billion Dollar Repair Bill's First Victim

[dabraun]

Anyone who reads Microsoft employee discussion boards knows that the Xbox has become the company's most hated product and the calls for heads to roll after the shocking billion dollar repair bill were loud and clear from everyone.

Interesting? This is a troll. XBox is one of the most loved products internally at Microsoft. It creates excitement, it's one of the few things that makes Microsoft look at all "cool" these days. Sure, people know that Office and Windows make the majority of the money, but XBox, mobile, media center, and even Zune are actually exciting (ignoring Zune's lack of success thus far, they are trying new things, they are competing head on with Apple, they are taking risks, and thats exciting even if it doesn't rake in the dollars).

Will XBox ever end up with a net gain financially? I certainly can't say, but I'm also not entirely sure it matters. Think of it as general Microsoft brand-awareness marketing expenses - with the possibility of profit in the long run.

Re:Billion Dollar Repair Bill's First Victim

[Anonymous Coward]

You post a lot of angry, anti-Microsoft vitriol in every console article. You're very passionate about it for some reason. Either you are:

a) An individual who feels he has been wronged by Microsoft somehow, and you're lashing out at them for revenge.

or

b) A fanatical devotee of a competing console that isn't doing as well as expected, attempting to strike out at what you perceive to be the "enemy" responsible for this situation.

I vote for option b, but either way, your little rants come off as sad and desperate.

Re:Billion Dollar Repair Bill's First Victim

[IQpierce]

This is pretty surprising, as a game developer; it's not surprising that heads are rolling due to the billion-dollar design mistake, but I'm surpried that M$ axed their most recognizable spokesman for the system.

But I would be far, far more surprised to see Microsoft axe the XBox 360. The fact is, they're just now effectively killing their primary competition, the Playstation 3. Granted, they're not doing so in Japan very effectively, but in America (which is where the lion's share of the money is to be had), they're far ahead of the PS3: they had a year's head-start and the larger stable of games that comes with that; they're already ahead of the PS3 by almost every measurement, and this is just BEFORE they release Halo 3, which will be not only their system-defining game, but will be a frickin' cultural event in America.

The other ace up their sleeve is development, as someone else pointed out. Many people are pointing out that, even though the PS3 is more powerful, most games look better on the XBox 360 than on the PS3. The reason is that a great majority of games are being made for both systems (Sony's loss of exclusives is another nail in their coffin for this generation); and the XBox 360 is easier to develop for (partly because their development kits, like their system, was ready a year before Sony's, but also because their development pipeline is just much, MUCH better). So effectively, every game is made for the 360 first, and then a PS3 port is made as quickly as possible... the PS3's greater power is not being utilized, because it's not a cost-effective way to develop the games.

Finally, they're making great inroads into Japan by working with companies like Capcom - a smart investment, which may lead to the NEXT generation of the XBox finally becoming successful over there; and which, more importantly, will lead to the excellent Japanese developers making more games for the 360, and making more Sony exclusives become present on both platforms (even the Metal Gear Solid 4 developers considered this).

I'm not a Microsoft fanboy, I'm just pointing out the many things that are going well for them, the fact that Sony is quickly falling distantly behind them, and that they would be stupid to quit just when they're about to control a great portion of the hardcore AND mainstream gaming market.

Here's an informative chart on system sales in North America, aligning the launches of the 3 current consoles and graphing their relative sales over a period of weeks. (Note that since I AM a Nintendo fanboy, I'm gratified to see that the Wii is, even in America, flying off the shelves at a greater pace than either of the other consoles.)

Re:Billion Dollar Repair Bill's First Victim

[Anonymous Coward]

Didn't you apply for a job with Microsoft?

Re:Billion Dollar Repair Bill's First Victim

[trdrstv]

"Under heavy pressure from whom? Xbox Live subscriptions are up, beating projections (I think Moore said they crossed the 7 million subscriber mark at E3). The only people I've seen who care about the price of Live are those coming from an environment without a cohesive online story (Sony fanboys, mostly)."

Xbox Live is certainly a supperior offering to anything found on the Playstation or Wii consoles, but I think the numbers have beed fudged a little bit. Because there are two different Xbox Live service levels, one of which is free, it makes me wonder exactly how many of these subscriptions are paid for and how many are silver members.

The Live subscriptions reported includes both silver & gold. I think it's safe to assume that most (50% + 1 person) of that 7 million is the silver (Free) version, and not every one of them owns a console.

I (for example) have 4 accounts on my X-box 360. 1 is mine (and I pay for the gold service) and the other 3 are accounts for some friends who don't own an X-box, but stop over and game from time to time (and yes they are Silver members, not local accounts for the online leader boards). So I wonder how many of the subscriptions out there are in a similar fashion.

Re:Billion Dollar Repair Bill's First Victim

[swit]

Hmmm, I should be such a victim.

See: http://sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/712515/00011931 2507156469/d8k.htm

Excerpt:

UNITED STATES
SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION

FORM 8-K

Date of report (Date of earliest event reported) July 17, 2007

Item 5.02. Departure of Directors or Certain Officers; Election of Directors;
Appointment of Certain Officers; Compensatory Arrangements of Certain Officers.

Appointment of Executive Officer

The material terms of the Offer Letter are as follows:

- Mr. Moore's annual base salary will be $550,000 and his discretionary
    target bonus percentage will be 75% of his annual base salary.

- EA has agreed to pay Mr. Moore a one-time bonus of $1,500,000 (minus applicable taxes)
    in recognition of the future compensation value he would be foregoing by leaving his
    position at Microsoft. Although Mr. Moore will earn this one-time bonus at the completion
    of his second year of employment with EA, he will receive it within 30 days of
    starting employment. If Mr. Moore voluntarily leaves his employment with EA before
    the completion of two years, he has agreed to repay to EA the full net amount of the bonus.

- EA has agreed to grant Mr. Moore a stock option to purchase 350,000 shares of the
    company's common stock pursuant to EA's 2000 Equity Incentive Plan. The stock option will
    vest as to 24% of the shares twelve months from the first day of the month in which the
    grant is made, and will then vest in additional 2% increments each month thereafter
    for the following 38 months.

- EA has agreed to grant Mr. Moore 50,000 restricted stock units, which vest as to 50%
    of the shares on the second anniversary of the grant date, and as to the remaining shares
    on the fourth anniversary of the grant date.

- EA will assist Mr. Moore with relocation-related expenses, which are currently estimated
    to be approximately $330,000.

See the URL for the full details.

SWIT

Re:Billion Dollar Repair Bill's First Victim

[Godji]

" the Xbox has become the company's most hated product "

It's also their only cool product. I wonder if there's any correlation?

Innovation

[neoshroom]

"I'm thrilled to join an already strong team that's delivering truly amazing gaming experiences to customers around the world. I've never been more excited about the future of the industry, and firmly believe Microsoft will lead the next great innovations in gaming."

EA!!

[EvilRyry]

He left MS for EA!? Wow. Things must be really bad at Microsoft these days. This is the company that got hit with that class action lawsuit by its employees for overworking them without overtime pay.

Re:EA!!

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the company that got hit with that class action lawsuit by its employees for overworking them without overtime pay.

He's an executive. The treatment is somewhat, uh, different than your average 80-hour-a-week employee.

Re:EA!!

[Anonymous Coward]

I suggest you talk to some people who work at the "name brands" in the games industry... EA treats the employees better than all of the other top studios. It's not uncommon for people to leave other companies like Valve, Rockstar, etc. and join up at EA as they get older, because at least it's possible to have a family and an EA job. There are always some managers who pressure you to work more, but for the most part, you can put in ~50 hours a week and still have a steady paycheck to bring home to the wife and kids.

There's a reason that EA ends up being ranked near the top of companies to work for, "EA_Spouse" blog notwithstanding.

Re:EA!!

[Kalriath]

Sony PS3.

Re:EA!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes but there is another part to that. EA has a terrible curve to the way they treat their employees.

If you are entry level or low ranked employee then your experience will be abysmal. You will be treated like crap and shoved from crunch to crunch until you burn out. If you have a lot of experience and are a lead programmer, executive producer, lead artist or something like that it's not so bad. Then you get to put in a few hours doing risk management/problem solving, then tell the people low on the totem pole to work to death while you get to go home.

Re:EA!!

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah, but they don't overwork executives.

Re:EA!!

[dabraun]

He left MS for EA!? Wow. Things must be really bad at Microsoft these days. This is the company that got hit with that class action lawsuit by its employees for overworking them without overtime pay.

And just which side of the class-action suit do you think he's being hired into - the group who sued or the group who got sued?

Re:EA!!

[BrandonBlizard]

Let me assure you, its not the top executives working 80 hour weeks.

Chair throwing jokes in 3... 2... 1...

[Stormx2]

I'm so sorry.

Re:Chair throwing jokes in 3... 2... 1...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, we know WHOSE chair was thrown this time...

Re:Chair throwing jokes in 3... 2... 1...

[Anonymous Coward]

Fucking John Riccitiello is a fucking pussy!

Recipie for Insightful

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently goes something like:

1. Spout unfounded tripe about MS
2. Do so with absolutely nothing to back it up
3. Karma!

Re:Recipie for Insightful

[JordanL]

Holy shit, AC's generate karma now? Screw this posting logged in...

Re:The "mess" that Slashdot desperately wants

[Anonymous Coward]

The bitter tears are wonderful.

Cry, fanboy, cry.

PS "MS will laugh all the way to the bank"

7-8 billion in losses!!! Who exactly is laughing at Microsoft?

Re:Spot the blatant troll.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hrmmm, 8.8 million seems to be more than half of 11.4 million to me...

http://nexgenwars.com/

Re:Spot the blatant troll.

[ucblockhead]

The 360 has sold 10 million in a year and a half. The Wii has sold 9 million in eight months.

9 is more than half of 10. More to the point, it is extremely likely that the Wii will overtake total 360 sales in the next couple years.

Best thing to happen to MS Games in a while

[grapeape]

Most of MS's problems have stemmed from Moore sticking his foot in his mouth. He has been easily one of the most arrogant "leaders" in the gaming business rivaled only by Kutaragi. Most of MS's pr problems can be directly related to some boneheaded comment by Moore from "3% failure rate" and "Y'know, things break" to this weeks remarks about wanting Final Fantasy as a 360 exclusive. I am guessing the "personal reasons" are more in line with Kutaragi's dismissal from Sony. I certainly dont see this as the "put a fork in it" end of the 360 that the Sony fanboys are wishing for, if anything it will give MS an opportunity to right the ship and perhaps get someone in that position that can be a little more in touch and sympathetic to their audience. I nominate Hironobu Sakaguchi he is already in house and could be the "face" that would give MS an inroad to the Japanese market that has been impossible to attain.

Re:Best thing to happen to MS Games in a while

[Twixter]

I totally agree with this.

I don't see Microsoft walking out of the console market for two reasons:

1.) Sony's complete recent failure in the vision for their next generation console.

2.) The fact that the 360 is by far the most adopted "next gen" console and from the looks of Sony's blunders, won't be surpassed.

Even if it did cost them billions, whats that compared to market share and potential revenue? "Oh, we have a winning product with the majority of market share, lets pullout." Doubtfull.

Besides, people are missing the long term view. Microsoft understands the importance of the appliance entertainment computing market, and the 360 ties in perfectly with this.

Now, the Zune...that may get dumped.

Re:Best thing to happen to MS Games in a while

[Anonymous Coward]

They will never get a Japanese audience without making a whole bunch of Japan-only titles.

Typical Japanese and American gameplay styles are radically different.

Re:Best thing to happen to MS Games in a while

[OmegaBlac]

The PS3 hasn't even been out for a year and already the Xbots are claiming it a failure. Hilarious. It is still way to early to crown the king of this current generation--especially as the Wii is about to overtake the stagnate Xbox 360 in units sold--so I wouldn't give Xbox the title yet.

Re:Best thing to happen to MS Games in a while

[Anonymous Coward]

"Kutaragi's dismissal from Sony."

Love it! Yes people who are 'dismissed' always work on future products like Kutagari is on the PS4 right now...

It is understandable the bitterness towards Ken from the Xbot crowd - he designed another amazing console that is defect free, silent, easily supports 1080p games, is about to hit the break even on manufacturing costs at the one year point just like the PS2 did, won the HD format war with BluRay, and as everyone else just saw at E3 ABSOLUTE SHITS ALL OVER THE 360 IN GRAPHICS with Killzone, Uncharted, Lair, Ratchet and Clank, GT.

Re:Best thing to happen to MS Games in a while

[grapeape]

Hmm I know that after he was replaced by Kaz Hirai as President last year he was named chairman of SCEI and CEO but about a month and half ago Sony said he would retire instead and be named "Honorary Chairman" and Hirai was given the CEO title as well. Did something change?

Re:Best thing to happen to MS Games in a while

[Anonymous Coward]

Kutagari had been talking about retiring for quite a while. He's been doing Playstation design for over a decade. He isn't strictly working for Sony anymore, but there have been news stories reporting that he is still involved with the next Playstation hardware design which should already be in the early stages of planning.

Re:Best thing to happen to MS Games in a while

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup, most other big companies would look for a way to exit the video games business after an operations disaster of this magnitude, but other companies don't have the Twin Monopolies throwing off $1B in earnings every month. As someone once said, if you can buy your way out of a problem, you have an expense, not a problem.

Microsoft paid similarly ridiculous sums to settle antitrust claims by Sun and others, so they'll regard this charge as part of the learning their way around this new business. Although Ballmer is most certainly pissed off as Moore's resignation demonstrates (Robbie Bach is probably not turning away too many calls from top shelf headhunters either).

Ideally, Microsoft would like to sell the games and operating software, and leave the manufacturing, service and fulfillment to someone else. That's the model they know and love. But that just doesn't work for video games, mp3 players, and probably not phones. Not to mention that Microsoft doesn't have an exactly stellar reputation for producing long term win-win situations for their business partners. So Microsoft will take their licks and trundle on, despite the howling of some investors. They'd rather lose a fortune than be shut out of these huge consumer platforms.

Re:Best thing to happen to MS Games in a while

[grapeape]

After Atari started loosing marketshare after the 5200 they followed up with the and followed up with the 7800, Lynx and Jaguar before they gave up.

Sega kept trying after never beating Nintendo with the Master System, they were beat again with the Genesis by the SNES, by the Playstation with the Saturn and by the PS2 with the Dreamcast.

Though it was never brought stateside with the exception of the Turbografix, NEC competed from the early 80's to the mid 90's with several versions of the PC Engine.

Nintendo got spanked with the N64 and the Gamecube but still have kept going.

Which companies are you speaking of? The only ones I know to throw in the towel early in the gaming market was 3D0 and frankly with its price and lack of interactivity it was dead before it started.

Re:Best thing to happen to MS Games in a while

[Anonymous Coward]

You are in lalaland if you really believe the "MS has billions and will soldier on" line that teenage fanboys love to spout. With a flat for five year stock price, the Xbox project has been the number reason Microsoft has been having trouble beating street estimates.

Taking the Xbox mess out back and putting a bullet between its eyes either has been going or is going on right now up in Redmond.

Re:Best thing to happen to MS Games in a while

[LKM]

Companies like Atari, Sega or Nintendo don't really have a choice. Make hardware or become a software-only company? They'll try number one as long as they can. Microsoft, on the other hand, does have a choice. Axing the Xbox will only improve their finances.

Re:Best thing to happen to MS Games in a while

[Twixter]

Hey, I'm all for the Wii. Love the thing. But I haven't picked a side in the console wars. I don't own any!

As far as the PS3, I only call it a failure because of the lack of content and the far below projected sales numbers. Technically, its a fantastic success! (Especially compared with the 360's problems.)

Re:Best thing to happen to MS Games in a while

[mink]

The Turbo Duo (AFAIK PC Engine) was brough stateside. I think I bought my from Electronics Boutique in '92 pr '93.
The one we didnt get I thin was called the PC-FX (xbox360 reminds me of it in look).

Re:The "mess" that Slashdot desperately wants

[AuMatar]

No, to be a success it needs to make money. Either hardware alone or hardware+softwware would be acceptable. So far, its a ridculous failure, losing several billion dollars.

Re:The "mess" that Slashdot desperately wants

[Anonymous Coward]

Erm, MS is only about ~$300 million in losses for their gaming division, and turning a profit overall as a company.

Sony is suffering around ~$600million losses for their gaming division and is $11.3 billion in debt overall as a company.

Oh well, guess you'll be the one crying now.

leaving ms for ea?

[Anonymous Coward]

so he's been cheating? wonder how many new ea games are gonna have Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A work from now on.

Re:Spot the blatant troll.

[Anonymous Coward]

The Wii will easily overtake the 360 in the next two months.

Microsoft must do something for the shareholders

[EmbeddedJanitor]

MS has had a really bad year in terms of execution. Zune. XBox. Vista. All of these have underperformed which must make for a very unpleasant stock holders' meeting.

Shareholders are the ultimate customers of the company and MS needs to do something to show that they are fixing the problems. They need to demonstrate a "correction" of sorts.

MS has too much invested in Vista. However, Zune and Xbox (which have bled cash badly) can be sacrificed. MS needs to do this to be perceived as a worthwhile investment.

Re:Microsoft must do something for the shareholder

[Anonymous Coward]

Killing off the Xbox has to be something Microsoft is seriously considering right now. It would be a painful and humiliating PR event for the company but it would send a good sign to wallstreet that they are serious about getting the company back on track and growing.

Stopping production on the Xbox hardware and moving the worthwhile parts of the division over to PC gaming would probably be the best move for the company.

Re:Buh bye Xbox - You won't be missed

[grapeape]

Hmm Kutaragi stepped down after a series of blunders as well...

Billions in Losses. Every PS3 overpriced by design. Only 3.6million sold since launch. A sell-thru rate on Bluray disks at less than 2 per player sold. Little Big Planet looks like a boring tech demo rather than a game.

Stick a fork in the miserable disaster that is called Playstation3, it's done.

Not that any of that means anything...but its real easy for a few words to be change the perspective to that of the other sides fanboys. Both have had their problems and probably will continue to, what I don't get it why its so important to some people to have one fail?

Re:Buh bye Xbox - You won't be missed

[UnknowingFool]

Yeah, the only console that looks healthy financially is Nintendo's Wii which most people had written off for dead. They make money on every console. Time will tell if the lack of good games will be resolved.

Quelle surprise!

[jalefkowit]

Anytime you find yourself writing a letter to explain how a screw-up of yours is going to cost your employer a billion dollars (with a "B"), it's probably a good time to dust off the old resume...

oops

[ucblockhead]

My brain said months and my fingers typed years.

Re:Buh bye Xbox - You won't be missed

[justinlindh]

I've never had a problem with my 360. Not a glitch or a freeze at all. HD-DVD isn't dead, and Microsoft doesn't have very much to lose if it does die. Lots of my friends would argue that Halo3 is a "last gen looking dud". I really do enjoy my 360, and especially have a blast on Xbox Live. I had a lot of fun with my original xbox, too.

I'm just trying to point out that, from a consumer viewpoint, the Xbox isn't dead and I hope it doesn't go away.

The billions of dollars that MS has lost on the Xbox does still have the chance to redeem themselves. It's absolutely sizable, but it's still an investment. MS currently holds a substantial lead over Sony, although that could change.

Even if you think things look grim for the Xbox, it's not going away overnight. Worst case is that they decide to not release another console after the 360.

360 is Microsoft's most successful product!

[Drake42]

Which is the most successful: Zune, Vista or the 360? Even the latest Office software got lukewarm reviews.

I've played with dev kits for the 360 and they're really a dream to use. (No I don't work for MS or any affiliated company) All the developers I spoke to wanted to work on a 360 more than anything else because they did a great job of making the system easy to develop games on. (in fairness, I haven't gotten to see a Wii dev kit, but I heard nothing but complaints from the people using PS/3 kits)

Some one else said that MS gave things until the 3rd generation. That would imply all the rest of this gen and a whole additional gen before MS pulls any plugs. Besides, against the Wii the 360 has fabulous staying power. By the time the next gen comes around they'll be able to make a 360 for $3.60.

Plus, Sony will be bankrupt by then. Sure the Wii is doing better than expected, but the whole goal of the 360 was to get the PS/2&3 out of their way. It has succeeded.

The way Sony bet their entire company on the PS/3 just to watch the consoles sit in stacks beside the "Wii Sold Out" signs mean the imminent bankruptcy of Sony as a company. Pity all the Japanese that have the retirement funds wrapped up in Sony investments because that company is going to die. In fact, I will posit that if the PS/3 doesn't pull itself together this Christmas, Sony will implode to a tiny shell of its former self by the following Christmas. They've invested too much into the product for basically no return. It makes the 360 look like a gold mine in comparison.

So we'll have Wii60 for most of ten years. Sony will be out of the market. Some other pointless companies will make another try and fail. In the end it will be Nintendo, MS on Console and MS on PC.

Re:360 is Microsoft's most successful product!

[Anonymous Coward]

bleeding money = success?

Re:360 is Microsoft's most successful product!

[UnknownSoldier]

> (in fairness, I haven't gotten to see a Wii dev kit, but I heard nothing but complaints from the people using PS/3 kits)

The Wii dev kits, aside from needing 3 USB cables, are not bad. Not great, but not bad (still not sure where to find a keyboard & mouse to hook up to it), but other then that, the hardware is small, and doesn't have the CD/DVD issues like the PS2 dev kits (due to lack of one ;-). Host mode is a little funky (can't have open files in the host dir, and the total dir size must be less then 4 gigs) but it works. The connection issues between the devkit and PC seems to be fixed with the later firmware versions.

The Wii literally is a GameCube 1.5. With more memory. Still no stencils, pixel, or vertex shaders, but hey -- forces developers to focus on gameplay for once. Nintendo has always had fun, original titles.

Source for some of the SDK is included (sadly, not the GX*() lib.) Thankfully that includes the matrix library, so one can get up to speed on the paired single assembly for your skinning code.

Codewarrior for the Wii is still, how can I put this politely, still a Beta product. It has a SUPER aggressive dead-stripper -- even removing code that is USED. Debugging can literaly take up _2 minutes_ to startup if you have a lot of include paths. Fortunately most issues can be worked around, even if the dam thing crashes once a day. (Latest debugging patch fixed a LOT of instability.)

I haven't heard _one good thing_ about the PS/3 kits either. Server-mounted rack style size. It just goes down hill from there...

There is no love lost here for the PS2 either -- the 40 Megs on the PS2 just isn't enough. (I actually _like_ the funky PS2 hardware design, so I'm the exception, but then I enjoy reading VU code :-)

The content creation pipeline for XBox 360 & PS3 is getting insane. What's ticked a lot of developers off is that Sony has dropped the PS2 development like a sack of hot potatoes DESPITE the fact that PS2 games are still selling strong! Not EVERYONE is doing next-gen content!

You're right about Sony crashing & burning. They have become extremely arrogant and will be eating humble pie this gen. Its funny to see "old-gen" Wii outselling "next-gen" PS3 at least 6 to 1. Sony has enough "cash reserves" to last the PS3 debacle, but they will survive. A co-worker and I noted the _exact same_ thing happened to Nintendo with it's N64 a few years back (75-80% market dominance), and along came the PSX. (Original PlayStation for the whipper-snappers.) Those who fail to learn from history, are doomed to repeat it. Now Nintendo is reaping the benefits of being able to use same GPU for 8 years!

I did manage to see the original XBox dev kit and tools a few years back -- it was a dream compared to how difficult Sony and Nintendo making development. So I can certainly imagine how much better the 360 dev kits are. Microsoft has always focused on dev tools more so then the others. Edit-and-Continue is a god-send for debugging and fixing those silly logic errors.

XBox Live has saved the XBox. Aside from that fact that you can't have free downloads for your game, it has some pretty neat content. HOW long did it take Sony to get their act together and provide a unified online system for developers and consumers?

I really need to finish writing up my "Implementing OpenGL on the Wii" paper...

Re:360 is Microsoft's most successful product!

[grapeape]

Does your mom know your up past your bedtime potty mouth?

Re:360 is Microsoft's most successful product!

[UnknownSoldier]

So what games have you worked on?

Re:360 is Microsoft's most successful product!

[Blackhalo]

"potatoes"

Dan Q is that you?

BTW the line "President Quayle" no longer scares me.

Re:360 is Microsoft's most successful product!

[The Moof]

It has a SUPER aggressive dead-stripper... It has aggresive stripper zombies?
Who says Nintendo only targets a younger market...

Re:360 is Microsoft's most successful product!

[MemoryDragon]

Sony is going nowhere, although a little bit of problems would help their attitude. First of all many Sony divisions operate positively, secondly, Sony has very good sellers with the PSP and the PS3 (the psp is selling well although not in DS regions it is a successful handheld, and deservedly so, the hardware is phantastic the only thing problematic is the attitude of sony on what the users can do with it - UMD aaargh), and even if the PS3 dies on the console front, it definitely helps Blue Ray to stay. We are talking about a huge international corporation here, which has many divisions, if the shit hits the fan, sony can close all its non profit units or closes them down and still be very huge. We talk about a company knee deep in media business, hardware, gaming,and lots of other assets. So sony has about the same chance to go the way of the dodo as microsoft does, although I would not mind if both companies went away!

Re:360 is Microsoft's most successful product!

[UnknownSoldier]

lol.

I write code, not novels. ;-)

Re:360 is Microsoft's most successful product!

[big4ared]

Dude, no kidding. I do cross platform work on the 360/PS3. You missed a few important points.

That fan on the PS3 kits is no joke, especially the early CEB kits. I turned it on one time, and then my proDG license expired, so I couldn't log in to turn it off!!! Didn't want to hard-reset it either...so yeah, my coworkers were a little ticked.

And of course, there is the whole libgcm situation. Sony's opengl (PSGL) is crap...no one uses it. Libcm is a little more than direct hardware access, but not much.

On the Xbox 360 side, PIX is the coolest thing ever!!!! My only complaint for the Xbox 360 is not enough EDRAM...predicated tiling is such a buzz-kill.

Re:360 is Microsoft's most successful product!

[Raenex]

+1 Interesting

Re:360 is Microsoft's most successful product!

[no haters]

People talking about Sony's financial woes drive me nuts. Sony is reporting quarterly and annual PROFITS. Go read their annual report before you talk about things you don't understand. The gaming division is posting losses, just like MSFT, but the company as a whole is reporting profits due to strength in their other arenas (notably consumer electronics/tvs and film), again, just like MSFT. Sony is not going bankrupt. They aren't seeing the returns they would have liked on the PS3, but they are FAR from insolvent.

Re:360 is Microsoft's most successful product!

[Merk]

"Even the latest Office software got lukewarm reviews". Office (like Windows) is pretty much beyond reviews at this stage. It's a monopoly treadmill and as much as people may complain about it, they're going to keep buying it. Typical IT departments don't read reviews and say "Hmm, maybe we should consider other alternatives to Office", they just keep on buying the latest upgrades because doing anything else risks breaking compatibility and will result in never-ending headaches.

As for the rest of the comment, an X-Box 360 for $3.60? What was the point of this obviously untrue and meaningless comment? You also state that Sony will be bankrupt by the time the next-gen consoles come around. Do you have even a shred of evidence to back this up, or is just fanboi speak? At most Sony might decide to get out of the game console business, but I have yet to see any evidence of even that. Their company as a whole is a big, solid, stable company with tentacles in consumer electronics, the music industry, and many other things.

All 3 of the big boys in the business have very deep pockets and can survive a rough patch pretty easily. 2 of the 3 are also small divisions of huge multinationals and can afford to take a loss on their entire gaming business if they think it's worth it in their long-term goals. For Sony, it may be worth it because they want to dominate high-end consumer electronics and game consoles fit neatly in that niche. For Microsoft, it may be worth it because they want to hedge against the traditional PC losing ground to set-top devices.

I don't think the grandparent poster is right either. I bet MS considers the 360 a decent success, despite the hardware issues, on the other hand, if you're going to dispute someone's facts at least don't make up "facts" for your own post.

Re:360 is Microsoft's most successful product!

[ravyne]

I suppose that "Implimenting OpenGL on the Wii" paper will be riddled with NDA material, but on the off chance that its fit for public consumption, where might I be able to find it when its finished? I'd be very interested to give it a read.

Re:360 is Microsoft's most successful product!

[grahamd0]

You obviously don't know just how big Sony is.

I'm no fanboy. I have no interest whatsoever in the PS3.

However, Sony isn't just a consumer electronics company. They sell a lot of decent to high quality professional video and audio equipment around the world, and if you head over to Japan you'll find they produce and market damn near everything a person could exchange money for.

Re:Spot the blatant troll.

[mk3k]

The Wii is NOT a replacement for the 360. The systems cater to differen audiences. With the PS3 a colossal bomb, console gamers have only one traditional system to turn to.

Don Mattrick replaces Peter Moore

[grapeape]

Don Mattrick the former President of EA studios has been named to replace Peter Moore. Don starts next week, Moore starts in his new position at EA as head of EA Sports in September. Head of the an entire console to head of one division of a game company? Sounds like a step down to me.

For those that dont remember Don Mattrick was the President when EA was still in the black, though he was also the president through the overworked programmers scandal. Mattrick has worked as an advisor to Robbie Bach the head of MS's entertainment divison for the past year.

More Info http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/07/17/ap392358 2.html

With Bach taking over so quickly, it certainly sounds to me like this has been brewing for a while.

Re:Don Mattrick replaces Peter Moore

[JFMulder]

To me, a 1.5 million signature bonus is not a step down. Besides, once you've been VP of the biggest software company's game division, there is not a lot of other places to go up to.

Re:Buh bye Xbox - You won't be missed

[Chosen Reject]

Not that I like either console (I'm a PC gamer with an eye on the Wii), but some of your counterpoints don't really compare.

The Xbox division has lost billions. Not just the 360. Both consoles lost/are losing money. The Playstation brand on the other hand is making lots of money on the PS2 right now. Remember, the PS2 is still outselling the 360.

You can't really compare overpriced by design and defective by design. Granted the defective thing might be a little exaggerated, but just because both are design issues, doesn't mean they'll cause the same problems, or even the same type of problems, or even problems at all.

As to sales, worldwide the PS3 is doing about as well as the 360. if you align the launch dates.

Bluray is also doing slightly better than HD-DVD so that argument is out. But even then, most Bluray players sold are the PS3, which is a game console, which probably has a higher rate of non-bluray player usage than a stand-alone bluray player. So it skews the disks per player sold.

Lastly, don't discount tech demos. That's what Wii Sports is. It's bundled in the US, but it is sold separately in Japan, and it's still selling fast. Some times what looks like a tech demo is what people want.

Re:The "mess" that Slashdot desperately wants

[badasscat]

The fact is that only a very small number of XB360s fail

"Very small"? Denial ain't just a river, you know.

MS themselves admitted the number of faulty systems is "meaningful" (their word, not mine) and that the flaws in the system were "significant", were "design issues", and were "multiple" in number. You can read all this yourself straight from the horse's mouth here. Read that call transcript and educate yourself. These are things MS cannot lie about lest they risk a shareholder lawsuit and SEC investigation.

AND, they have handled their defective units in a far more upright fashion than other companies have done, I might add

Nintendo recalled every single Famicom on the market when they realized it suffered from a design flaw. They waited 6 months before they were confident they had fixed it, then they re-launched the system.

A 3 year warranty on a system with admitted significant design flaws (again, MS's own words) is a "far more upright fashion" of dealing with the problem than a recall?

MS will laugh all the way to the bank

To the tune of $7 billion in losses and counting, I guess.

Peter Moore was fired. I like the guy, but he was fired, and probably over the RROD fiasco.

Re:The "mess" that Slashdot desperately wants

[badasscat]

Erm, MS is only about ~$300 million in losses for their gaming division, and turning a profit overall as a company.

Sony is suffering around ~$600million losses for their gaming division and is $11.3 billion in debt overall as a company.

MS is at $7 billion in losses and counting for their gaming division.

Sony posted a loss in one quarter with their gaming division, but overall are in the black by more than $9 billion.

In addition to that, "debt" has nothing to do with whether or not a company is profitable. Sony cleared a little more than $2 billion in net profit each of the last 3 years.

Re:Spot the blatant troll.

[I'm Don Giovanni]

Who cares? The Wii games suck ass.

Someone who knows how to make hardware?

[Anonymous Coward]

I hear Ken Kutaragi is looking for a job.

Re:The "mess" that Slashdot desperately wants

[Anonymous Coward]

Peter, is that you?

Maybe it's a lot more simple than that.

[MaWeiTao]

Isn't it just possible that EA offered this guy a higher salary than he was earning at Microsoft? Maybe he gets to work from home. Maybe he just doesn't like the weather in Redmond. Just because a guy leaves a company doesn't inherently mean anything significant. If the success of the Xbox360 is dependent on whether or not Peter Moore remains at Microsoft then they've got some serious issues.

Re:Maybe it's a lot more simple than that.

[king-manic]

Isn't it just possible that EA offered this guy a higher salary than he was earning at Microsoft? Maybe he gets to work from home. Maybe he just doesn't like the weather in Redmond. Just because a guy leaves a company doesn't inherently mean anything significant. If the success of the Xbox360 is dependent on whether or not Peter Moore remains at Microsoft then they've got some serious issues.

Sure, His Voluntarily exit is just as likely that Steve Ballmer making significantly less then John Riccitiello.

Re:Microsoft must do something for the shareholder

[grapeape]

They still have nearly 3x the install base of the ps3, a huge lineup of games coming in the next 6 months and a 65nm redesign that will allow the to finally be profitable on the hardware side. Ditching the Zune i can see, but ditching a product that is just edging towards a profit? And shifting towards a market that is shrinking by the day is absoutely absurd.

Re:Spot the blatant troll.

[Araxen]

You can say they cater to different audiences, but Microsoft doesn't want to settle for anything less than #1 this time around and they are failing at achieving that. The Wii is becoming the Ipod of the video game market and there isn't any amount of money short of giving away 360's(which they can't anyhow due to anti-trust/dumping issues) to change that.

Re:Spot the blatant troll.

[grapeape]

If thats the case they should probably just drop Halo3, Blue Dragon, GTA IV and whatever else is in the pipe and focus on more things like the Viva Pinata party game, Uno and Sceneit! There is still the whole gaming market to think about, most gamers this generation will buy two or even all 3 consoles. If the neither the ps3 or 360 achieve numbers close to the previous generation you might as well concider console gaming dead. The biggest problem I see with the wii is the number of games purchased per console owned. I know six people near me with Wii's, none of them have as many games as I do and I only have three (Zelda, Wiiplay and Wiisports). Most of them are totally happy with Wii Sports.

Don Mattrick

[beesmum]

I had the honor of working on Don Matrick's property when he lived in Vancouver for a lawn/gardening company. He had a huge(I mean city block huge) plot of land near the University, really beautiful and scenic, looking onto the ocean. I only met him once or twice myself, but he was always really polite and courteous, a stand up sort of fellow. Can't help but add class to Microsoft's public image. Kudos to him.

Re:Microsoft must do something for the shareholder

[king-manic]

They still have nearly 3x the install base of the ps3, a huge lineup of games coming in the next 6 months and a 65nm redesign that will allow the to finally be profitable on the hardware side. Ditching the Zune i can see, but ditching a product that is just edging towards a profit? And shifting towards a market that is shrinking by the day is absoutely absurd.

And still several billion in the hole. They may get lower turn over and better thermal efficiency from the 65nm fab but will it make enough of a difference to share holders? because MS doesn't especially give a fuck about you or me (neither does Sony or Nintendo), they only care about our money. The 360 hasn't edged towards profit due mainly to design flaws and their made cheap and break easily. They know once the word gets out it would fuel an exodus to the wii for the main stream and to the PS3 for the hardcores. They wisely extended all warranties to blunt the PR mess their high fault rate would cause. Unfortunately it now makes them further in the hole.

Vista seems to depends on the xbox

[anduz]

It's no secret that sales on pc games are on a downward spiral while sales on console games reach new heights every year, and in my eyes it looks like Microsoft is going to depend on their xbox brand if they want games for Windows Vista. Some games like Mass Effect (and KOTOR before it) are already going exclusively for consoles, atleast in the beginning; but if it wasn't for the 360 I think you'd see many of the games that have become cross-platform inorder for them to reach a wider audience going exclusively for the PS3.

The 360 is going to be a rather wonderful tool for Microsoft gaming since it's now possibly to play with Windows Vista because Live works on both systems. One example being Age of Conan which might get cross platform servers allowing console gamers to play with their pc gaming friends - something that none of the other Consoles will offer anytime soon.

"So what, if it wasn't for the 360 all the freaks who got it would be playing on Windows." you might think, and you might be right - but I know that I personally prefer gaming on a console because of the whole Sofa aspect and if Microsoft had axed the xbox brand early, never releasing the 360 I'd own a PS3 instead now. :p Of course I might be the only one who thinks that way and thus completely wrong about Vista depending on the Xbox; but I doubt it.

Tattoos

[DingerX]

Ooh nice. I too was wondering how they'd laser up that GTA job. Maybe "Get The Sims IV"?

Moore money, Moore problems.

[nobodyman]

The timing of Moore's departure makes it seem pretty likely that the Billion Dollar Rebate was the culprit. That said, It's a not totally fair to lay the blame squarely at Peter Moore's feet. He didn't design the thing, and he wasn't in control of the division when the flawed design was rushed out the door. You could just as easily blame J. Allard. Maybe they fired him, but it's equally likely that the constant xbox problems wore him down to the point to where he decided he'd had enough.

Either way, Microsoft seems to have a problem being a leader. When they're in 2nd place, they have no problem with focus or drive, but once they gain the lead they just fall apart. Take IE for example. Development occurs at a breakneck pace until IE4 reaches 95% market share, then they just stop.

For a time, it seemed like Microsoft was firing on all cylinders with the 360. Now that they are in the lead position, it's all falling apart. They are diluting the focus of the product (it's a game player, no, it's a media center, no, it's an IPTV box, no, it's a video rental program) and confusing the market (360, 360 premium, 360 elite, 360 Halo edition...).

The real reason...

[ChargingPaladin]

Apparently if you pause Rock Band in the middle of a trade show you've only got a week to have your resignation on Bill's desk.

http://www.g4tv.com/e32007/blog/post/677245/Watch_ Peter_Moores_Rock_Band.html

Maybe if he were better at the game... maybe that's how positions actually get decided at Microsoft now, Rock Band Tournament.

Re:Spot the blatant troll.

[LKM]

Wii and 360 are going after the same consumer money and the same game publisher money. If I'm going home to play Mario Strikers instead of Fifa (or whatever) on the 360, then the Wii definitely replaced my 360. There are people who would buy a 360, but not a Wii, and there are a huge number of people who would buy a Wii, but not a 360, but there is also a lot of overlap in the two target audiences.

The 360 and the Wii aren't competing on the same level as the 360 and the PS3 are competing, but there's definitely some competition between the two.

"Small" as in "every last one of them"

[LKM]

The fact is that only a very small number of XB360s fail

The fact is that Microsoft wrote off enough money to fix every 360 ever sold.

Charging for Online Gaming ist dumb

[LKM]

The only people I've seen who care about the price of Live are those coming from an environment without a cohesive online story (Sony fanboys, mostly).

I'm not a Sony fanboy. In fact, I think the PS3 is an overpriced, underperforming, oversized piece of crap with not enough games and lots of crappy ports. Yet I bought a PS3 instead of a 360, and one of the reasons is the fact that I'm not going to pay for online gaming.

Why? I don't play a lot of online games. In fact, I play a few hours of online games a month. When Mario Kart DS came out, I played that for a week or so, until everyone else was so good that I couldn't win anymore. When Mario Strikers came out, I played a bunch of online matches. When Motorstorm came out, I drove a few online races.

I don't have time to play games too often anymore. I can't compete with all the people playing Halo. I like online gaming, but I don't have the time to play it often, or be good enough to compete after the first few weeks a game is out.

And I'm not going to pay 50 or so bucks just so I can play 20 or 30 hours of online games a year.

I imagine most gamers actually behave similarly to me. I know a lot of gamers, but I don't know anyone who puts a lot of hours into online games. By charging for online gameing, Microsoft actually makes sure that people like me - people who want to play a few online matches from time to time, but not regularly - simply won't even consider the 360.

as with IGN and Gamespy

[Anonymous Coward]

shit + shit = shit

The Xbox Business Plan, the PS3, and Apple

[LKM]

I think keeping the 360 is just throwing good money after bad money, and Microsoft probably knows it.

I think to figure out what is going on with the 360, we have to go back a bit and consider why Microsoft launched the Xbox. I think the reason was that they were afraid of Sony gaining a foothold in content distribution. Microsoft made a strong push towards DRM, hoping to get content providers to distribute content using Microsoft's technologies, therefore helping its Windows monopoly. Meanwhile, Sony was incredibly successfull with the PS1 and then the PS2. Microsoft must have perceived that as a threat: There's somebody else who can distribute content for content providers into every home. And even worse, their box is hooked up to a TV, where - surprise - most people actually watch their content.

So Microsoft must have decided that, in order to ensure their content distribution monopoly, they needed to get rid of Sony by building their own box sitting in people's living rooms. And they did. But what they did not notice was that Sony wasn't the only competitor. While Microsoft was busy going after Sony, Apple started using Windows. They managed to put iTunes on a huge number of Windows computers, thereby usurping Microsoft's DRM monopoly.

So in a way, the Xbox is obsolete. People are using iPods and iTunes and maybe even AppleTV to get to their content. They aren't using the PS3.

Which leaves us with the question: Does it make sense to keep pouring money into the 360 if the actual threat is the iPod? Microsoft decided to go ahead with the 360, but also start going after the iPod with the Zune. I'm guessing they will keep this strategy for now, but I'm also guessing that Microsoft realizes that

• Sony maybe isn't such an important threat as they initially thought
• Apple is a much bigger threat
• the biggest thread is the move away from DRM

Without DRM, there is no monopoly for Microsoft. Maybe in the end, all that money was wasted anyway.

Re:The Xbox Business Plan, the PS3, and Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

Without DRM, there is no monopoly for Microsoft. Maybe in the end, all that money was wasted anyway.

That's the result I'm praying for, as far as DRM is concerned. Show the future that freedom is worth more than the money that it costs to suppress it. Show that there's no profit to be had in treating everyone like criminals.

Xbox to become ex-box?

[Mark Gillespie]

In the same week that shareholders of the Xbox division sell all their shares...

Hmm, something is up... From an Xbox division that's never made a cent, but lost $7 Billion.

I would't be suprised if Microsoft are on the verge of throwing in the towel, all the signs are there. The Xbox360 about to become the ex-box360? Stranger things have happened at sea.

Look at the facts:

Microsoft Xbox division insider sells all his shares, prior to the reliability issues revelation (that everyone already know, despite Microsoft's lies/denial)

A Lacklustre E3, with nothing new to show aside from a green Halo 3 branded 360 (20GB, no HDMI)

Peter Moore jumping ship, 1 week aftre E3

Unhappy shareholders, with a 1.15 $billion yearly 360 repair bill.

A buisness than has confirmed losses in excess of 6 $Billion since it started it's Xbox venture ($6 Billion does not include the $1.15 Billion a year repair bill).

A poor history of customer support (Original Xbox was out 3 years before it was discontinued in favor of the 360).

A rushed to market 360, with serious design flaws, reliability issues, tied to the failing HD DVD format that can't be used for games, as it's not standard fit, and inconsistent product lineup (no HDD in core, so developers can't develop with a HDD inmind, DVD can only be used for games, as the HD DVD is optional).

Lastly, consumers finally seeing what the 360 is, expensive, once they buy charge kits, Wifi, HD DVD drives, and yearly XBL subs, and unrelaible to boot.

A division about the throw in the towel, all the signs point to it. I can't see Microsoft wanting to muddy it's name any further with the XBox name.

Re:Xbox to become ex-box?

[MeanderingMind]

Problem 1: Microsoft doesn't "Throw in the towel". To outright admit defeat is something that Microsoft has never, and will never do. If they're convinced the Xbox can't and won't make them money, they'll finish out this generation and then release a console that can't succeed but won't lose them any significant cash, and just fade away.

Problem 2: Everyone's E3 was rather lackluster. Microsoft is not special in this regard.

Problem 3: The Xbox is in the strongest position it ever has been to date, including the recalls and warranty extensions. It's maintaining a lead on the competition (the PS3) that was supposed to beat them from day 1. Pulling out now would be passing up the best opportunity Microsoft has had thus far, while simultaneously giving Sony a free ticket to success.

Problem 4: Microsoft has Halo 3 on the way in about 2 months. Shareholders might be mad now, but September is bound to show some pretty numbers that will supplicate them.

We'll see if Microsoft does, but I find it highly unlikely that they'll fold at this point.

Re:Xbox to become ex-box?

[cttforsale]

I agree with everything you said, but I still feel it is a little early to count the PS3 out. If you look at the sales based from start date, the PS3 is doing the same numbers as the XB360. Only the Wii is killing... This Xmas/early spring will really tell the tale. http://www.vgchartz.com/hwcomps.php?cons1=Wii&reg1 =All&cons2=PS3&reg2=All&cons3=X360&reg3=All&align= 1 I'm still liking the XB360 as I've enjoyed my original XBOX so very much. I plan on getting one after the die shrink and when it is cheaper...

Re:Xbox to become ex-box?

[MeanderingMind]

For the record, I didn't say that the PS3 could be counted out. I simply stated Microsoft is in the best position they ever have been in this industry, and have a lot of opportunities moving forward. Both the PS3 and the 360 are selling at about the same rate globally, though one beats the other depending on where you look.

Re:Xbox to become ex-box?

[cttforsale]

Yep, sorry!

Comparison

[Avatar8]

So whenever Moore or Mattrick leave their current companies we'll have a qualified individual capable of writing the authoritative book "The Greater of Two Evils: MS vs. EA."

Sickening thing is how rich these two and others like them are getting on *failures.* Normal people don't make money for failures - they tend to lose their jobs. What a scheme.

XBOX

[psquare]

I wrote a computer program called XBOX which displays a few thousnand boxes on the screen every second. Maybe I should be heading Microsoft Games division.

Re:Spot the blatant troll.

[MeanderingMind]

The PS2.

Seriously.

Re:The "mess" that Slashdot desperately wants

[MeanderingMind]

At first I was going to say, "He's the marketer, why would they fire him for a hardware issue?"

Then I realized, this is Microsoft.

Looks like he did it for the money

[anduz]

Despite all the doomsaying and ranting it turns out that he probably did it for the money; as Joystiq.com is running an story saying the following:
An SEC filing has revealed that EA dropped a $1.5 million bonus on Peter Moore to help lure him into heading up their sports division. The Tattooed One got the check in recognition for the money he'd be missing out on by leaving Microsoft, though he'll have to give it all back if he leaves EA in the next two years. This is in addition to a more than half-million dollar annual salary.

Being head of EA sports is not really a bad move either and likely quite the challenge if he is to reinvent their image in the public eye.

Re:Looks like he did it for the money

[anduz]

Ooopsie forgot the link.
http://www.joystiq.com/2007/07/18/peter-moore-to-g et-1-5-million-bonus-550-000-salary/

ACSFT

[Anonymous Coward]

Save your breath and your time.

ACSFT = Anonymous Coward Sony Fanboy Troll

He doesn't just make anti-MS posts. They're just the most numerous, because they are the easiest to make (and believe). These are actually the least humorous of his trolls, because sometimes there is a seed of truth to the things he picks on. He also makes nonsense anti-Nintendo posts that simply don't jive with reality and pro-Sony posts that would be impossible to believe unless on medication. These are the funny ones.