Steve Ballmer Replaces Don Mattrick As Xbox One Chief 343
Edsj writes "While Don Mattrick leaves Microsoft to work at Zynga, Steve Ballmer announces that, from now on, he will be directly in charge of the Xbox One division as quoted: 'Don's directs will report to me and will continue to drive the day-to-day business as a team, particularly focused on shipping Xbox One this holiday.'"
Re:Reorg (Score:5, Informative)
You have absolutely no clue how big reorganizations are handled in big companies. First everything is done in secret as much as possible with the fewest people knowing. Then each person is called to the CEOs Office and informed about the reorg. Things do leak, but revealing rumors and the CEOs hand early causes damage. Do things any differently(letting people know from the media or other employees) and it's going to cause a lot of bad blood and bad morale on top of those caused by the decisions themselves. The process is the same in almost all organizations including Google, so I don't know what you're foaming at the mouth for.
MS, according to you, is in such a state of disarray that Ballmer cannot reveal the real head of Xbox, but instead has to step in temporarily??? And we expect that pending reorg to accomplish what, exactly???
This reorg is just not just about switching heads, it about reorganizations the divisions themselves. There may not be a Xbox division at all and instead may be merged into a new hardware division along with Surface etc.
Re:Reorg (Score:3, Informative)
So you're whining the summary is misleading because they didn't entirely invent what was happening like you did? Get real, jackass.
It was misleading because the summary and headline intentionally left off and totally ignored the following line from the article so that it could have a better chance of getting posted on Slashdot.
There’s every chance this is a temporary solution until Microsoft completes its wider management restructuring.
Re:Reorg (Score:3, Informative)
A major reorg of MS is imminent,
While it's likely a good guess, as the end of major development cycle often brings big changes and most CEO's don't tend to collect direct reports, claiming that a reorg 'is imminent' is misleading and likely biased in itself. Are you afraid of competition?
Please RTFA or buy a fucking clue. I am so tired of stupid Slashdot stories and commeters who only get their Microsoft news from Slashdot and don't even RTFA. This is turning into something worse than reddit, same with the Secure Boot and Vista DRM FUD that was spread on here.
http://www.theverge.com/2013/6/23/4457082/microsoft-reorg-expected-by-july-1st-rumor [theverge.com]
http://bgr.com/2013/06/24/microsoft-reorganization-2013-windows/ [bgr.com]
http://www.theverge.com/2013/7/2/4486278/don-mattrick-microsoft-exit-major-reorg-rumor [theverge.com]
http://www.phonearena.com/news/Microsoft-reorganization-may-lead-to-unified-Windows-department-finally_id44442 [phonearena.com]
http://www.google.com/search?client=opera&q=microsoft+reorganization&sourceid=opera&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&channel=suggest [google.com]
>claiming that a reorg 'is imminent' is misleading and likely biased in itself. Are you afraid of competition?
If that is misleading and biased, then what you said is just plain dumb and shows how Slashdot has declined into a sad circlejerk of deluded 14 year olds railing against M$ after reading made up stories to gather karma points. Point out a fact that's not anti-MS or is anti-Apple or anti-Google and get overrated mods for days. Last one out turn the lights off.
Re:Well, (Score:2, Informative)
.NET, particularly at its launch, was a superior product compared to Java. As time has moved forward, the only thing keeping Java relevant has consistently been its community support. The majority of projects in Java require some sort of third party libraries or a bloated Java EE container, while a lot of .NET projects can get away with what exists in the framework (or the bloated ASP.NET, to be fair). It's no wonder that Google's Guava library is still far superior to the JDKs collections API(s) even as we approach the far off release of JDK 8, which is only now adding things that .NET (and many other languages/frameworks, now including C++11) already include.
I am not sure that Flash was a shiny toy by the time Silverlight appeared. Silverlight was so far ahead of Flash that I am disappointed that it did not replace it. Considering that Microsoft's own Xbox Music uses Flash and Netflix is moving to HTML5 + DRM, it appears that Silverlight is a dead technology. I think we all wish that Flash were joining it.
The refocus on WinRT and C++ were logical decisions based on the direction of the industry rather than a direct reflection on Objective C. WinRT actually unifies the different frameworks on Windows 8: HTML/JS, C++ and .NET. Most people have completely misinterpreted its purpose, which is to allow developers to pick the language or framework most suited for their project(s) while still getting first class support there. Previously, C++ always had the leg up because of native access to the Win32 API, which was only loosely exposed in the .NET Framework (although accessible via Interop). Refocusing on C++ is also quite logical because of the shift to mobile development; it enables developers to port existing code from other platforms and slap a new UI (using WinRT's APIs) on top of it with very little other changes. WinRT should eventually replace Win32, which, if the promise is kept, means that all frameworks and languages benefit.
Personally, I am actually quite happy that Microsoft is still pushing Bing to compete with Google because no one else was doing it. Looking at Google Maps, it was stale before Bing Maps started to actually beat it in a few areas. Office 365 is clearly a direct "me too" response to Google Docs, but I have honestly heard a lot of good things about it. I still use Google Docs (because it's free), but I have consistently hit walls in it where it is simply too limited.
With the Xbox One, Azure will prove to have been a smart investment because it gives them infrastructure that Sony simply cannot compete against for years--if truly ever. Ignoring that, I have heard good things about it, but I have never used it. I can only hope that they are pushing AWS in the same way that Bing pushes Google.
And, for what it's worth, I am a Java developer.
Re:Well, (Score:4, Informative)
DOS was crap, dude
It was a hell of a lot better for the desktop than CP/M.
Re:Well, (Score:0, Informative)
2) Flash was ancient by the time Adobe bought it, let alone when Silverlight was created.
3) Did you forget Win Mobile, which came before iPhone and Android?
4) Objective C...shiny? It's two years older than Windows!
5) MS has had a search engine for over a decade as well. Remember MSN?
In short, shut the fuck up.