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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.'"
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.
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.
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.
The cake is a pie
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.