What the hell? You are the only that keeps insisting that this was all a part of the re-org yet "plans change". That makes absolutely no sense. There are two scenarios here: 1) Mattrick was on his way out and MS knew it for a while. Yet MS did not have a replacement for him despite doing a re-org and Ballmer will have to lead the division because no one in all of MS can do this but Ballmer. 2) Mattrick's exit was sudden and Ballmer doesn't have a replacement for him yet.
Option 3) Mattrick's exit was sudden and Ballmer has a replacement in mind, but since the huge reorg is going be announced in a few days and he does not want to hint or reveal the big changes which even add and remove divisions like hardware, software, services just yet because everything is not ready yet, tells the team to report to him for now while telling them to continue to concentrate on getting things ready in time for the big holiday so that people have someone to report to in the interim instead of a void.
Read my other comment and the first reply to it. http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3929159&cid=44166085
If there is going to be a re-org in a "few days" , there will be new bosses for all parts of MS anyways. And if there is a new boss in a few days, there won't be speculation for the holidays, will there? That makes no sense.
I was referring to speculation now,in the coming few days, while working for the big holiday release, not speculation during the holidays. They to prepare for the Xbox One release from now itself, not just at the last minute while releasing it. It's a new unreleased product. Reread what I said.
For the nth time, the reason behind mentioning the holiday season is to focus the team on what they have been working hard since years for, and implying that regardless of new bosses and loss of an old boss, the gratification of releasing the Xbox One during the holidays is important. It wasn't to imply that Ballmer will be head of Xbox at release time in November. Even the FA says the same thing. If you think there is something like that somewhere, either reference it or tell me what make you deduce it.