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Microsoft Puts Minecraft Boss In Charge of Xbox Games (theverge.com)

Microsoft is promoting its Minecraft boss to the head of the company's games studios. "Matt Booty's new role sees him oversee Microsoft Studios, second only to Microsoft's games chief Phil Spencer," reports The Verge. "Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella previously promoted Phil Spencer from head of Xbox to a new role overseeing all games, associated hardware, and game strategy." From the report: Spencer reports directly to Nadella, with Booty now reporting directly to Spencer. GamesBeat reports that Booty's new role will see Microsoft devoting more resources to its games business. Booty will be looking after Microsoft's relationships with 343 Industries, The Coalition, Mojang, Rare, Turn 10 Studios, and Global Publishing. Booty first joined Microsoft back in 2010, and helped launch games for Windows phones. He's also helped develop Xbox Live Arcade, and oversaw Minecraft maker Mojang after Microsoft acquired the company for $2.5 billion back in 2014.

50 comments

  1. That's NOT how it's done in this industry by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    For the new division lead, you don't promote a white guy from within, you hire an Indian from outside the company.

    1. Re:That's NOT how it's done in this industry by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How long did it take you to become suck a piss artist? I hope you're proud

  2. Re:THIS is gonna end well lol by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    MOD PARENT UP OR DIE

  3. Sounds like a good choice by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Unless he hired a ghostwriter for this article, he could be the real deal:
    https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/making-lunar-lander-game-unity-matt-booty?articleId=6356732752997556224#comments-6356732752997556224&trk=prof-post

  4. Matt .. "Booty" ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'm sorry, but with a name like this he must have got so much stick at school, still the piles of money he sleeps on must be some consolation.

    1. Re:Matt .. "Booty" ? by Quirkz · · Score: 1

      They say people often unconsciously pick careers that match their names (even loosely - there are more dentists named Dennis that you might expect, say). Obviously, this guy had a choice of going into piracy or video games. It's just destiny.

    2. Re: Matt .. "Booty" ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nah Microsoft ruined destiny with destiny2.

  5. Where the booty at? by TimothyHollins · · Score: 2

    I guess the booty at Microsoft these days.

  6. Minecraft boss by Nofip · · Score: 2

    So... Ender dragon?

    1. Re:Minecraft boss by Barny · · Score: 2

      Wither

      --
      ...
      /me sighs
    2. Re:Minecraft boss by sheramil · · Score: 1

      Herobrine.

  7. Get On It by mentil · · Score: 1

    First order of business... get Platinum Games to un-cancel Scalebound. Next, contract a new Fable title, ideally dark fantasy this time (more Brothers Grimm rather than Dark Souls, though.)

    --
    Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
    1. Re:Get On It by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      rumor is that a new fable is already well into production

    2. Re:Get On It by Dutch+Gun · · Score: 1

      Next, contract a new Fable title

      Sure, why not?

      https://www.gamespot.com/artic...

      --
      Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
  8. huh? by TWX · · Score: 4, Funny

    I didn't think that having written some little find-the-bomb puzzle game in the late eighties would qualify one for modern gaming unless he'd kept with the progress of game development over the last thirty years.

    --
    Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
    1. Re:huh? by Curunir_wolf · · Score: 1

      I didn't think that having written some little find-the-bomb puzzle game in the late eighties would qualify one for modern gaming unless he'd kept with the progress of game development over the last thirty years.

      Word.

      I kept hearing for YEARS how popular Minecraft was before I realized people were not, actually talking about Mine Sweeper!!

      --
      "Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
      --- Jerry Garcia
  9. It has to be said... by Miles_O'Toole · · Score: 5, Funny

    "Spencer reports directly to Nadella, with Booty now reporting directly to Spencer."

    There has always been a place for Booty in e-games. I think it's described in detail in Rule 34.

    --
    Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.
    1. Re:It has to be said... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Spencer reports directly to Nadella, with Booty now reporting directly to Spencer."

      There has always been a place for Booty in e-games. I think it's described in detail in Rule 34.

      Booty has been involved in many modern video games. Most games nowadays have Booty involved one way or another. Let's just face it, you can't escape Booty.

  10. TIL by thegarbz · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I didn't know Minecraft had a boss. I mean buying something for a fortune, then doing nothing with it other than failing to get it into schools as some form of education didn't seem like something worthy of needing a boss to oversee, much less praise that boss enough to promote their failure.

    1. Re: TIL by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Minecraft has several modules in the code.org website targeting elementary age kids, with one of them a fancy âoelogoâ clone to move turn dig etc. with a click and drag script that my 7 year old mastered in a day.

    2. Re:TIL by Baron_Yam · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Minecraft is one of those big disappointments in life - so much potential, squandered until you just don't care anymore.

    3. Re: TIL by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      Minecraft has several modules in the code.org website targeting elementary age kids

      Exactly. Thowing something out, slapping an educational label on it, and calling it a day does not make something a success, much less promotion worthy. Just because a few kids have fun playing it doesn't mean their attempts have been incredibly lame.

  11. Minecraft has languished by drinkypoo · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It's been years since Microsoft took over MC (fuck you, Notch, you lying sack of shit) and development has been even slower than before, and long-standing bugs have not been fixed. For example, placing half-slabs while lagged results in placing them where you physically could not place them, the net code is pure garbage, the game still punches your GPU in the nuts for no apparent reason (minetest uses like 10% of the GPU of MC for the same visual quality) and placing more than a couple dozen hoppers without capping them off with furnaces still lags the game to hell and back. They've done absolutely nothing to fix bugs, so that's vintage Microsoft, I guess.

    If what has happened to MC under this tool's watch is any indication, Microsoft Games will go entirely down the toilet.

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    1. Re: Minecraft has languished by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Why so bitter toward Notch if the game is being developed at the same rate and frustration level it was before he sold? Are you just jealous? I seem to recall all of /. lining up to declare they are jumping ship as soon as Microsoft Microsofted the game. Clearly in hindsight that never happened.

    2. Re:Minecraft has languished by oic0 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Thats not how businesses work. They dont care about your bugs. They care about one thing: "how much proffit did it make?"

    3. Re:Minecraft has languished by Dare978Devil · · Score: 2, Informative

      Microsoft purchased Minecraft in Sept 2014. At the time, the game had sold 60 million copies worldwide across all platforms. By February 2017, the game had sold 121 million copies, doubling the number since the acquisition, and making it the best-selling PC game of all time (2nd best across all platforms). That's why Notch got the promotion.

    4. Re:Minecraft has languished by PingSpike · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Notch isn't this Booty guy. Notch mostly tweets and swims through pools full of cash these days. Booty's main claim to fame is being placed in the driver seat of an already running money printing machine and not fucking it up by messing with the levels to much. Which I guess counts as top tier leadership at Microsoft these days based on how many of their other acquisitions have worked out.

    5. Re:Minecraft has languished by rhazz · · Score: 2

      That's why Notch got the promotion.

      Notch sold Minecraft to Microsoft and left. The guy being promoted is (I guess) the guy Microsoft put in charge of the product after they bought it from Notch. But you're right, Minecraft has had continued success under Microsoft. However from a layman's view you might compare this to putting a guy on a train that is already moving at top speed, then later rewarding him for not fucking it up.

    6. Re: Minecraft has languished by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      He connected very obvious dots and went to the bank with it, made a bunch of empty promises to the people who built his tower of cash and then quit, taking a large wad of money with him and dumping the game with Microsoft.

      What's to like is what I want to know

    7. Re:Minecraft has languished by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 2

      It's been years since Microsoft took over MC (fuck you, Notch, you lying sack of shit)

      No, fuck you. Do you think you could turn down a billion dollars? He made the right choice too.

      --
      Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
    8. Re:Minecraft has languished by tlhIngan · · Score: 2

      However from a layman's view you might compare this to putting a guy on a train that is already moving at top speed, then later rewarding him for not fucking it up.

      You know how freaking hard that is?

      Usually someone comes in and wants to dabble with this and that to "put their mark on it" and that leads to all sorts of crap going on and changes for the worse.

      To h ave someone able to put all that aside and let things run is quite unnatural. SO yes, the fact it isn't all screwed up by now is amazing. The fact it's sold twice as much since acquisition is amazing.

      Also, how many times have you heard of X acquiring Y and Y getting completely messed up? It happens almost always despite promises to the contrary. Thus, if Minecraft is even more successful under Microsoft, it took a lot of restraint in not screwing it up.

      And for someone to manage a game studio, I suppose that's an excellent trait - if Microsoft were to acquire a bunch of studios, this guy would likely have a very light touch on things so it likely wouldn't be Microsoft that screwed up.

    9. Re: Minecraft has languished by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I have no idea which minecraft you play but it sure ain't the one I play/admin. He'll we have dozens of uncapped hoppers on chunk 0 without lag.

  12. Re:THIS is gonna end well lol by michelcolman · · Score: 3, Funny

    But which boss is it? The Wither or the Ender Dragon?

  13. the neurotic minecraft obsession by nimbius · · Score: 1

    Minecraft exists on sixteen platforms now. Arguably it had this marketshare before Microsoft ever cast a wistful eye toward the company. Many will argue this, but I believe "peak minecraft" was about 4 years prior to microsofts acquisition in 2014, in keeping with the habitual 4 year latency Microsoft has in releasing anything remotely aligned with a popular trend.

    Ever since the buyout, the pattern has looked suspiciously similar to its phone ventures. Gobble up a performer in the market like Nokia, then quietly and forcefully run it into the ground while keeping it on XBox life-support funding. Only in this case microsoft seems practically vapor-locked on Minecraft to bring it out of the 6 figure millions of dollars its lost in flogging surface and Azure without even so much as stopping to ask what Minecraft is. Microsoft purchased this gem for billions in the hopes it would captivate a young audience and mollify investors concerned the company wasnt 'hip' with the kids anymore (as if it ever was.) The intervention point for microsoft was about a year ago, when very serviceable open-source clones of the server came into existence to circumvent what many players considered to be pointless and infuriating features added by the Microsoft team to improve a casual game whos appeal was largely its lack of features.

    --
    Good people go to bed earlier.
    1. Re:the neurotic minecraft obsession by Opportunist · · Score: 1

      Buying Minecraft was about the most idiotic thing anyone could do. No, I don't mean buying a license to play it, I mean buying it, hoping that you can somehow "monetize the IP".

      One of the key features, one of the things that makes Minecraft the success that it is, is how easy it is to mod the shit out of it. Let's face it, there are plenty of Minecraft-y games out by now. Most of them some flavor of zombie survival game, but some actually just Minecraft with better graphics or enhanced bells and whistles. Why they don't get as successful? Mods. Or the lack thereof. Certainly MC has an advantage there of being on the forefront, pretty much defining the genre of "sandbox survival", and with many people playing it, many mods get created, causing more people to play it and create a positive feedback loop.

      Microsoft now doesn't really have a track record of being the most mod-friendly of companies. More likely they'd want to nickel-and-dime you for anything and everything you do, while at the same time controlling tightly just what you can do with the game itself, so you have to buy the next generation of their console and thus the next incarnation of their game.

      This flies right in the face of what people playing Minecraft want to do. They want an extendable and expandable universe and of course they do NOT want to start over after spending 5 years building a life size model of an Enterprise-D.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    2. Re:the neurotic minecraft obsession by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I've been mining and crafting since just before 1.0 dropped and this is 100% the case. The base game is fun, particularly in a multiplayer setting, but mods really made it something else. Having modpacks running on servers was wild, and it really added a new dimension to the already fun gameplay. The trouble with the mods was always stability, and that's mainly because Minecraft is a foundation of sand. Even before 1.0 they knew this, mods were out before the game had an official release and a modding API was promised. If Minecraft was big I think it would have been immense with a built in mod system.

      When Microsoft bought it the first thing we all thought was maybe this is the final kick-in-the-dev to make the Modding API a reality... (that's a laugh) but no, we got boring mobs, more boring blocks and a change to the combat mechanic that frankly, sucked.

      As other posters have mentioned Microsoft has let the IP stagnate, oh sure, there's a new version you can get for Windows... if you log into their Windows Store app (forget the login ID I've been using for 7 years I guess)

      Anyway, beyond merch, some spinoffs and some texture packs MS hasn't done much, the modding community still exists but it's nowhere near what it was 4-5 years ago.

      RIP in Pieces Minecraft, you had a good run.

    3. Re:the neurotic minecraft obsession by SuiteSisterMary · · Score: 1

      What does 'mod support' have to do with monetizing the Minecraft brand? I'd opine that the vast majority of Minecraft income is coming from merchandising.

      --
      Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
    4. Re:the neurotic minecraft obsession by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      Let's face it, there are plenty of Minecraft-y games out by now. Most of them some flavor of zombie survival game, but some actually just Minecraft with better graphics or enhanced bells and whistles. Why they don't get as successful? Mods. Or the lack thereof.

      Nonsense. There are piles of mods for some of the workalikes, like minetest. Minetest also abuses your GPU much less, although it does use slightly more CPU. Still, not so much that it's not playable on an atom netbook, which you can't do with minecraft at all these days. The GPU won't handle it. The reason none of them have taken off is that all the players are playing minecraft. People want to play with other people, and minecraft has already got the players. They're not going to switch.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  14. Games for Windows Phones by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Booty first joined Microsoft back in 2010, and helped launch games for Windows phones.

    Oh yeah! I remember all those hit games on my Windows phone... err... actually, no, I don't.

  15. Booty should run for president by kelemvor4 · · Score: 1

    I know nothing about him other than the fact that it would be great to have the news reporting about Booty every day.

  16. See previous point: Futures squandered. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    See previous point: Futures squandered.

  17. Re:Booty by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I presume this response is because you have this tune in your head now - https://youtu.be/xRwm9ppgJ40

  18. Micro transactions and paid skins for all by HalAtWork · · Score: 1

    Sounds like they put someone in charge who knows how licensing deals and monetization of existing properties works.

  19. Re:THIS is gonna end well lol by sheramil · · Score: 1

    Perhaps he'll be replaced by a team of three Elder Guardians.