Don Mattrick Leaves Microsoft To Become CEO At Zynga 100
krkhan writes "It has been confirmed by Zynga that the head of Microsoft's Interactive Entertainment Business, Don Mattrick, is taking over as the new CEO. Mattrick joined Microsoft in 2007 and has led the business during much of the lifespan of Xbox 360, as well as the launch of Kinect and pre-launch of Xbox One. Zynga shares jumped 12% following the news."
XBone One (Score:5, Insightful)
I think this guy saw the writing on the wall regarding the XBone One, and he got the hell out of dodge before the shit storm made landfall. Better to go to a place where you're wanted while you can still leave than be sucking on a "golden parachute" and have no job prospects.
Re:XBone One (Score:2, Insightful)
They're in it for the long game and as far as launches go, I still think the PS3 holds the title of the worst console launch.
I doubt that.
Sony's crime was mind-boggling arrogance, the belief that because they had so thouroughly dominated with the PS2 that they could do whatever the fuck they wanted and game developers and gamers would lap up their crap no matter how dumb it was. The central locus was the Cell processor, an exotic piece of hardware which is a bastard to program for and can't receive code that isn't specifically tuned for it without suffering nasty performance problems. Sony's thinking was that developers would write for PS3 first then do crap ports to other systems, or even not bother with ports since you effectively have to rewrite the whole damn graphics and sound stacks, thereby ensuring the PS3 had the best experience and everyone else would be second rate. We know how that ended, developers hated the Cell as anyone with a brain was predicting right out of the gate and the Xbox 360 enjoyed massive developer support, the PS3 wrecked Sony's dominating lead down to Microsoft's second fiddle.
The Xbone is similar to what Sony did; Microsoft, having attained a dominating position, believes they can do no wrong and everyone will eat up their crap and thank them for the privilege of receiving a turd sandwich. Like Sony, this has backfired spectacularly. You may say this puts MS on the same level as Sony, but really MS is worse — because they didn't learn from Sony's very obvious and very public bout of hubris. It takes some incredible short term memory, or earth crushing hubris, to ignore what happened to your competitor and try the exact same shit in a different color and expect a different outcome.
Re:From pits of sewage (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, MS will continue to stay afloat a lot longer thanks to legacy contracts and ingrained habits. But in 15 years, they'll be lucky to be another Yahoo (who will be long dead, along with Zynga).