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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.'"
a rat knows when a ship is sinking.
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.
"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."
Big apple, new Yorik, undig it, something's unrotting in Edenmark.
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.
Billions in losses. Every 360 defective by design. Only a million or so 360s shipped(not sold) worldwide for the first half of 2007. HD-DVD dead. Halo 3 a last gen looking dud.
Stick a fork in the miserable seven year disaster that is called Xbox, it's done.
First one gets a medal.
...or alternatively we could just stop modding this troll insightful, ignore his unfounded lies and never speak of this idiot again.
Oh, and if the 360 is doing so badly in Europe/USA then life must REALLY suck for Nintendo and Sony who haven't even sold half the consoles Microsoft has in this console round, perhaps the world needs to give up on not only consoles but computer games altogether! Hell, if Halo 2, the world's top selling FPS of all time, just recently taking the crown from Goldeneye 64, the previous crown holder in sales can't make Microsoft a profit then it's blatantly obvious that the whole computer games industry is doomed!
The only "mess" is the one Slashdotters are desperate to see. The fact is that only a very small number of XB360s fail, and MS has made a commitment to correct those. AND, they have handled their defective units in a far more upright fashion than other companies have done, I might add (Apple, we are looking at you).
XB360 only has to do one thing to be a success- it has to outsell the Playstation 3. And it's already accomplished that. Sony is going on to ignomious failure, and the XB360 will be a great success.
The market will be split between the Nintendo Wii, which may be the #1 console of the generation, and games which need more horsepower will end up on the XB360. The PS3 will go the way of the NeoGeo and other big-ticket console failures.
MS will laugh all the way to the bank, and Slashdotters will cry themselves to sleep, green with envy and their desperate, bitter hatred.
I'm so sorry.
Apparently goes something like:
1. Spout unfounded tripe about MS
2. Do so with absolutely nothing to back it up
3. Karma!
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.
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.
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.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
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.
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...
Read my blog.
My brain said months and my fingers typed years.
The cake is a pie
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.
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.
8 2.html
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.
I hear Ken Kutaragi is looking for a job.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
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.
: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.
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.
Ooh nice. I too was wondering how they'd laser up that GTA job. Maybe "Get The Sims IV"?
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...).
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.
_ Peter_Moores_Rock_Band.html
http://www.g4tv.com/e32007/blog/post/677245/Watch
Maybe if he were better at the game... maybe that's how positions actually get decided at Microsoft now, Rock Band Tournament.
The fact is that Microsoft wrote off enough money to fix every 360 ever sold.
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.
shit + shit = shit
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
Without DRM, there is no monopoly for Microsoft. Maybe in the end, all that money was wasted anyway.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.