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Xbox Exec Peter Moore Leaving Microsoft for EA

Posted by Zonk on from the british-man-in-redmond dept.

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.'"

4 of 133 comments (clear)

  1. Billion Dollar Repair Bill's First Victim by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Billion Dollar Repair Bill's First Victim by MemoryDragon · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

    2. Re:Billion Dollar Repair Bill's First Victim by badasscat · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

  2. Best thing to happen to MS Games in a while by grapeape · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.