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Microsoft Businesses XBox (Games)

Xbox Exec Peter Moore Leaving Microsoft for EA 133

Posted by Zonk 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.'"
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Xbox Exec Peter Moore Leaving Microsoft for EA More

Xbox Exec Peter Moore Leaving Microsoft for EA

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  • Billion Dollar Repair Bill's First Victim (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 17, 2007 @05:34PM (#19893425)
    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.

    • Re:Billion Dollar Repair Bill's First Victim (Score:5, Insightful)

      by MemoryDragon ( 544441 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2007 @05:46PM (#19893599)
      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.

    • Hardware is clearly an area where Microsoft has no business trying to compete in.

      Not true, they make very nice mice and keyboards.

      Regarding their failure in the console market, it is worth pointing out that no-one new has entered that arena and succeeded in any way since Sony arrived with the Playstation. There have been plenty that failed or exited altogether (Phantom, Nokia and Sega spring to mind).

      If Microsoft are unable to enter the market and do well with the billions they've thrown at it, then I

      • Not true, they make very nice mice and keyboards.

        But they've been making millions on their mice years before they even released Windows 95. Its not something they simply came up with recently.

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by WhatHappenedToTanith ( 1126905 )
        I must say that the microsoft mice which I have are so good that I have been using them for close to 9 years now (2 computers) and will get another microsoft mouse if one ever breaks. They are comfortable, responsive and have lasted longer than all the other mice I have ever owned combined. Cant stand the 'natural' keyboards though, but that simple statement might lead to a flamewar so I should validate people by stating that I do know plently of people who still swear by them :)

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Mprx ( 82435 )
          I've had the same MS Natural Keyboard for 8 years now and it's still going strong. I disassemble it for cleaning every so often (sometimes even taking the membranes out), but it gets heavy use and no signs of wearing out.
    • where's your proof that the console is doing poorly? from what I can see is that the defect is the only thing wrong with the xbox360. From what I can see in sales charts, the 360 is doing better than the PS3 on a month to month sales basis. It currently has the largest developer support and has the ability to play online games with PC users. If you really think you're correct, then I suggest you do your research to make sure anyway. Considering the only consoles that are selling extremely well are the PS2 a
      • where's your proof that the console is doing poorly?

        Microsoft has invested $24B+ in Xbox in order to make a cumulative $5B+ LOSS so far -- and that's not counting the $1-1.5B that analysts estimate the warranty extension will cost. "Negative 24 billion" plus "negative 5 billion" plus "negative 1 point something billion" equals "doing poorly".

        Personally, I'd be interested to see a record of stock transactions by IEB execs over the past few months.
        • Where are you getting your figures on how much money was invested in the Xbox from? A link would be helpful. Thanks.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Comen ( 321331 )
          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.
          If you really think that Microsoft will pull out of a market that they are doing well in, as far as out selling sony, no matter if they are losing 5 billion, when you look at what they have to risk my losing this battle, they know they really need to control the game market somehow, it is goin
          • 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.
      • The Wii isn't selling extremely well?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Xest ( 935314 ) *
      I don't know how people count to 7 billion in your world, but apparently it's quite different to how people count to 7 billion in the real world.

      http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?st ory=13698 [gamasutra.com]

      This article is before the 1 billion put aside to resolve the RROD problem of course, but I'm not entirely convinced that $315million + $1billion equals $7billion still.

      Still, this isn't the first time an anonymous coward has come forth and made near identical daft, unfounded claims with pretend knowledge

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by UnknowingFool ( 672806 )
        The OP is referring to the entire Xbox project which has not made any profits since the beginning. While MS has not released detailed numbers for the Xbox alone, the division that Xbox belongs has lost something on the order of 7 billion. With Xbox being a large part of that division, it is assumed that the majority of the losses are due to the Xbox. The division was scheduled to break even sometime this year; however, he latest repair bill will set the division back further financially. While Sony even
    • MS has had a really bad year in terms of execution. Zune. XBox. Vista. All of these have underperformed which must make for a very unpleasant stock holders' meeting.

      Shareholders are the ultimate customers of the company and MS needs to do something to show that they are fixing the problems. They need to demonstrate a "correction" of sorts.

      MS has too much invested in Vista. However, Zune and Xbox (which have bled cash badly) can be sacrificed. MS needs to do this to be perceived as a worthwhile investment.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by dabraun ( 626287 )

      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.

      Interesting? This is a troll. XBox is one of the most loved products internally at Microsoft. It creates excitement, it's one of the few things that makes Microsoft look at all "cool" these days. Sure, people know that Office and Windows make the majority of the money, but XBo

    • It's no secret that sales on pc games are on a downward spiral while sales on console games reach new heights every year, and in my eyes it looks like Microsoft is going to depend on their xbox brand if they want games for Windows Vista. Some games like Mass Effect (and KOTOR before it) are already going exclusively for consoles, atleast in the beginning; but if it wasn't for the 360 I think you'd see many of the games that have become cross-platform inorder for them to reach a wider audience going exclusiv
    • This is pretty surprising, as a game developer; it's not surprising that heads are rolling due to the billion-dollar design mistake, but I'm surpried that M$ axed their most recognizable spokesman for the system.

      But I would be far, far more surprised to see Microsoft axe the XBox 360. The fact is, they're just now effectively killing their primary competition, the Playstation 3. Granted, they're not doing so in Japan very effectively, but in America (which is where the lion's share of the money is to be had

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by swit ( 600376 )


      Hmmm, I should be such a victim.

      See: http://sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/712515/00011931 2507156469/d8k.htm [sec.gov]

      Excerpt:

      UNITED STATES
      SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION

      FORM 8-K

      Date of report (Date of earliest event reported) July 17, 2007

      Item 5.02. Departure of Directors or Certain Officers; Election of Directors;
      Appointment of Certain Officers; Compensatory Arrangements of Certain Officers.

      Appointment of Executive Officer

      The material terms of the Offer Letter are as follows:

      - Mr. Moore's annual base salary will

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Godji ( 957148 )
      " the Xbox has become the company's most hated product "

      It's also their only cool product. I wonder if there's any correlation?
  • "I'm thrilled to join an already strong team that's delivering truly amazing gaming experiences to customers around the world. I've never been more excited about the future of the industry, and firmly believe Microsoft will lead the next great innovations in gaming [pcworld.com]."

  • EA!! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by EvilRyry ( 1025309 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2007 @05:39PM (#19893503) Journal
    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.

    • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      This is the company that got hit with that class action lawsuit by its employees for overworking them without overtime pay.

      He's an executive. The treatment is somewhat, uh, different than your average 80-hour-a-week employee.

    • Re: (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I suggest you talk to some people who work at the "name brands" in the games industry... EA treats the employees better than all of the other top studios. It's not uncommon for people to leave other companies like Valve, Rockstar, etc. and join up at EA as they get older, because at least it's possible to have a family and an EA job. There are always some managers who pressure you to work more, but for the most part, you can put in ~50 hours a week and still have a steady paycheck to bring home to the wif

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by dabraun ( 626287 )

      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.


      And just which side of the class-action suit do you think he's being hired into - the group who sued or the group who got sued?
    • Let me assure you, its not the top executives working 80 hour weeks.
  • 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.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Twixter ( 662877 )
      I totally agree with this.

      I don't see Microsoft walking out of the console market for two reasons:

      1.) Sony's complete recent failure in the vision for their next generation console.

      2.) The fact that the 360 is by far the most adopted "next gen" console and from the looks of Sony's blunders, won't be surpassed.

      Even if it did cost them billions, whats that compared to market share and potential revenue? "Oh, we have a winning product with the majority of market share, lets pullout." Doubtfull.

      Beside

      • The PS3 hasn't even been out for a year and already the Xbots are claiming it a failure. Hilarious. It is still way to early to crown the king of this current generation--especially as the Wii is about to overtake the stagnate Xbox 360 in units sold--so I wouldn't give Xbox the title yet.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Twixter ( 662877 )
          Hey, I'm all for the Wii. Love the thing. But I haven't picked a side in the console wars. I don't own any!

          As far as the PS3, I only call it a failure because of the lack of content and the far below projected sales numbers. Technically, its a fantastic success! (Especially compared with the 360's problems.)

    • The timing of Moore's departure makes it seem pretty likely that the Billion Dollar Rebate was the culprit. That said, It's a not totally fair to lay the blame squarely at Peter Moore's feet. He didn't design the thing, and he wasn't in control of the division when the flawed design was rushed out the door. You could just as easily blame J. Allard. Maybe they fired him, but it's equally likely that the constant xbox problems wore him down to the point to where he decided he'd had enough.

      Either way, M
  • Anytime you find yourself writing a letter [xbox.com] to explain how a screw-up of yours is going to cost your employer a billion dollars (with a "B"), it's probably a good time to dust off the old resume...

  • 360 is Microsoft's most successful product! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Drake42 ( 4074 ) * on Tuesday July 17, 2007 @07:11PM (#19894593) Homepage
    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.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by UnknownSoldier ( 67820 )
      > (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)

      The Wii dev kits, aside from needing 3 USB cables, are not bad. Not great, but not bad (still not sure where to find a keyboard & mouse to hook up to it), but other then that, the hardware is small, and doesn't have the CD/DVD issues like the PS2 dev kits (due to lack of one ;-). Host mode is a little funky (can't have open files in the host dir, and the total dir size must be le
      • "potatoes"

        Dan Q is that you?

        BTW the line "President Quayle" no longer scares me.

      • It has a SUPER aggressive dead-stripper...
        It has aggresive stripper zombies?
        Who says Nintendo only targets a younger market...

      • Dude, no kidding. I do cross platform work on the 360/PS3. You missed a few important points.

        That fan on the PS3 kits is no joke, especially the early CEB kits. I turned it on one time, and then my proDG license expired, so I couldn't log in to turn it off!!! Didn't want to hard-reset it either...so yeah, my coworkers were a little ticked.

        And of course, there is the whole libgcm situation. Sony's opengl (PSGL) is crap...no one uses it. Libcm is a little more than direct hardware access, but not much.

        On

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ravyne ( 858869 )
        I suppose that "Implimenting OpenGL on the Wii" paper will be riddled with NDA material, but on the off chance that its fit for public consumption, where might I be able to find it when its finished? I'd be very interested to give it a read.
    • Sony is going nowhere, although a little bit of problems would help their attitude. First of all many Sony divisions operate positively, secondly, Sony has very good sellers with the PSP and the PS3 (the psp is selling well although not in DS regions it is a successful handheld, and deservedly so, the hardware is phantastic the only thing problematic is the attitude of sony on what the users can do with it - UMD aaargh), and even if the PS3 dies on the console front, it definitely helps Blue Ray to stay. We
    • People talking about Sony's financial woes drive me nuts. Sony is reporting quarterly and annual PROFITS. Go read their annual report before you talk about things you don't understand. The gaming division is posting losses, just like MSFT, but the company as a whole is reporting profits due to strength in their other arenas (notably consumer electronics/tvs and film), again, just like MSFT. Sony is not going bankrupt. They aren't seeing the returns they would have liked on the PS3, but they are FAR fro

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Merk ( 25521 )

      "Even the latest Office software got lukewarm reviews". Office (like Windows) is pretty much beyond reviews at this stage. It's a monopoly treadmill and as much as people may complain about it, they're going to keep buying it. Typical IT departments don't read reviews and say "Hmm, maybe we should consider other alternatives to Office", they just keep on buying the latest upgrades because doing anything else risks breaking compatibility and will result in never-ending headaches.

      As for the rest of the

    • You obviously don't know just how big Sony is.

      I'm no fanboy. I have no interest whatsoever in the PS3.

      However, Sony isn't just a consumer electronics company. They sell a lot of decent to high quality professional video and audio equipment around the world, and if you head over to Japan you'll find they produce and market damn near everything a person could exchange money for.

  • Don Mattrick replaces Peter Moore (Score:3, Informative)

    by grapeape ( 137008 ) <mpope7 AT kc DOT rr DOT com> on Tuesday July 17, 2007 @07:51PM (#19895027) Homepage
    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.

    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/ap392358 2.html [forbes.com]

    With Bach taking over so quickly, it certainly sounds to me like this has been brewing for a while.

     
  • Isn't it just possible that EA offered this guy a higher salary than he was earning at Microsoft? Maybe he gets to work from home. Maybe he just doesn't like the weather in Redmond. Just because a guy leaves a company doesn't inherently mean anything significant. If the success of the Xbox360 is dependent on whether or not Peter Moore remains at Microsoft then they've got some serious issues.
    • Isn't it just possible that EA offered this guy a higher salary than he was earning at Microsoft? Maybe he gets to work from home. Maybe he just doesn't like the weather in Redmond. Just because a guy leaves a company doesn't inherently mean anything significant. If the success of the Xbox360 is dependent on whether or not Peter Moore remains at Microsoft then they've got some serious issues.

      Sure, His Voluntarily exit is just as likely that Steve Ballmer making significantly less then John Riccitiello.
  • I had the honor of working on Don Matrick's property when he lived in Vancouver for a lawn/gardening company. He had a huge(I mean city block huge) plot of land near the University, really beautiful and scenic, looking onto the ocean. I only met him once or twice myself, but he was always really polite and courteous, a stand up sort of fellow. Can't help but add class to Microsoft's public image. Kudos to him.
  • Apparently if you pause Rock Band in the middle of a trade show you've only got a week to have your resignation on Bill's desk.

    http://www.g4tv.com/e32007/blog/post/677245/Watch_ Peter_Moores_Rock_Band.html [g4tv.com]

    Maybe if he were better at the game... maybe that's how positions actually get decided at Microsoft now, Rock Band Tournament.
  • So whenever Moore or Mattrick leave their current companies we'll have a qualified individual capable of writing the authoritative book "The Greater of Two Evils: MS vs. EA."


    Sickening thing is how rich these two and others like them are getting on *failures.* Normal people don't make money for failures - they tend to lose their jobs. What a scheme.

  • I wrote a computer program called XBOX which displays a few thousnand boxes on the screen every second. Maybe I should be heading Microsoft Games division.
  • Despite all the doomsaying and ranting it turns out that he probably did it for the money; as Joystiq.com is running an story saying the following:
    An SEC filing has revealed that EA dropped a $1.5 million bonus on Peter Moore to help lure him into heading up their sports division. The Tattooed One got the check in recognition for the money he'd be missing out on by leaving Microsoft, though he'll have to give it all back if he leaves EA in the next two years. This is in addition to a more than half-million

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