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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.'"
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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.