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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.'"
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.
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.
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.
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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/ap39235
With Bach taking over so quickly, it certainly sounds to me like this has been brewing for a while.
> (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)
;-). 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 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
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...