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Zynga Confirms Xbox Head Don Mattrick As New CEO

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Re: Zynga Confirms Xbox Head Don Mattrick As New CEO

#31

Post by dgallagher »

potatolicious wrote: post #8

With what little info we have, this seems actually like a good move. Part of Zynga's core problem is that their games are frequently more psycological tweakery than legitimately rewarding or fun. Importing someone who comes from "real" gaming seems like a good move in this regard. Hopefully this means Zynga intends to move towards "fun games with microtransactions" and away from "pretty one-armed bandits with microtr…

Part of Zynga's core problem is that their games are frequently more psycological tweakery than legitimately rewarding or fun.

Gamasutra has an interesting article up about that very subject: http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/RaminShokrizade/20130626/1949...

Re: Zynga Confirms Xbox Head Don Mattrick As New CEO

#32

Post by pharrington »

drivebyacct2 wrote: post #30
pharrington wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

fully disclosed reddit circle-jerk of misinformation I'll post this again, from an interview taken on June 10th. [Phil] Spencer: But we're also trying to launch and we understand feature sets. We've got partners and publishers [we] want to talk to about how lending is going to work. We don't dictate pricing to our partners on our platform. We want to give them capabilities to support content and business models that…

That whole article that you link to is about the Share with 10 Family Members feature, leading me to conclude that "lending" in that sentence is explicitly physical lending and... you know... from the context directly around it, reselling used games. >Xbox One will enable new forms of access for families. Up to ten members of your family can log in and play from your shared games library on any Xbox One. That's a con…

Saying "we don't care who the 10 people are" is a world of difference from "there are no restrictions on the 10 people you can share with." It is not implementation details that are defined in a contract. It is not information.

And again, Spencer was talking about "lending in a digital ecosystem." The thing Microsoft did not have concrete plans for. Yes, he mentioned they have a plan for gifting games, they have a plan for reselling games, but he contrasted this with the difficulty of, and their lack of plan for lending games.

Yeah I guess it's moot now, but at this point I always interpret a lack of specifics when talking about a product as marketing speak. We have fact sheets, we have plenty of discreet, unambiguous information of other features; when somebody goes out of the way to hype up a feature of a product while painstakingly avoiding concrete, verifiable information about said feature, and verifiable information about said feature doesn't appear in the previously mentioned fact sheets, I assume the feature doesn't actually exist yet. Especially when an executive goes on to literally say the feature doesn't exist.

Re: Zynga Confirms Xbox Head Don Mattrick As New CEO

#33

Post by drivebyacct2 »

pharrington wrote: post #32
drivebyacct2 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That whole article that you link to is about the Share with 10 Family Members feature, leading me to conclude that "lending" in that sentence is explicitly physical lending and... you know... from the context directly around it, reselling used games. >Xbox One will enable new forms of access for families. Up to ten members of your family can log in and play from your shared games library on any Xbox One. That's a con…

Saying "we don't care who the 10 people are" is a world of difference from "there are no restrictions on the 10 people you can share with." It is not implementation details that are defined in a contract. It is not information. And again, Spencer was talking about "lending in a digital ecosystem." The thing Microsoft did not have concrete plans for. Yes, he mentioned they have a plan for gifting games, they have a pl…

I took the references to the "notebook and disks" in the critical section of that interview to be implication of physical disc trading/lending but I understand what you're saying.

Still. I mean, this is what they published to the world as their official feature list: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:s-KgYAn... before they published the update in response to the butthurt backlash.

"Give your family access to your entire games library anytime, anywhere: Xbox One will enable new forms of access for families. Up to ten members of your family can log in and play from your shared games library on any Xbox One. Just like today, a family member can play your copy of Forza Motorsport at a friend’s house. Only now, they will see not just Forza, but all of your shared games. You can always play your games, and any one of your family members can be playing from your shared library at a given time."

Re: Zynga Confirms Xbox Head Don Mattrick As New CEO

#34

Post by sgk284 »

pwf wrote: post #17
potatolicious wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before being head of Xbox he was head of EA - he's not a stranger to the gaming industry from the dev side.

Even then I find myself asking how much fun games that EA was heavily involved in were...

If MSFT and EA don't do it for you, he was an exec at EA through an acquisition of his game company, Distinctive Software.

Re: Zynga Confirms Xbox Head Don Mattrick As New CEO

#35

Post by wilfra »

mtgx wrote: post #9
sriramk wrote: post #7

Great hire for Zynga. Don is hugely respected at Microsoft and was actually tipeed to be a potential Ballmer successor. Big loss for Microsoft.

Interesting. It seems a lot of "potential Ballmer successors" have been let go from Microsoft in the past few years, from Ray Ozzie to Sinofsky, and now this one, too. I wonder what this means for Zynga - more DRM?

There is no more certain path to an early retirement from Microsoft than being perceived as a threat to Steve Ballmer for the CEO job.

Re: Zynga Confirms Xbox Head Don Mattrick As New CEO

#36

Post by wilfra »

jcdavis wrote: post #2

Looks like Pincus is staying around though, which seems odd. If the board is unhappy with his performance (and rightfully so), wouldn't starting fresh be a better move?

the board == mark pincus

This was his decision. With a lot of outside pressure, certainly, but it was up to him.

Re: Zynga Confirms Xbox Head Don Mattrick As New CEO

#37

Post by [deleted] »

wilfra wrote: post #35
mtgx wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. It seems a lot of "potential Ballmer successors" have been let go from Microsoft in the past few years, from Ray Ozzie to Sinofsky, and now this one, too. I wonder what this means for Zynga - more DRM?

There is no more certain path to an early retirement from Microsoft than being perceived as a threat to Steve Ballmer for the CEO job.

[deleted]

Re: Zynga Confirms Xbox Head Don Mattrick As New CEO

#38

Post by ngoel36 »

JL2010 wrote: post #21

One thing that has gotten lost in the noise of Xbox One's marketing mishap and the targeting of Mattrick is perhaps his history as a true entrepreneur. While it hasn't shown so lately, Don does come from a grassroots background in gaming as a former 17 year old co-founder and programmer of Distinctive Software in 1982. His company was acquired by EA which likely put him on the path to executive level success. A kind…

When I was a PM for Xbox, I had the opportunity to sit down and have lunch with both Don Mattrick and his predecessor, Robbie Bach. Both were incredible tech leaders with a long history in gaming and a clear passion for the industry.

Moreover, people really liked Don. He was a leader that the division really rallied behind, and Xbox had its first profitable year under him. I'm excited to see what he can do with Zynga. I do find the transition a bit ironic due to his history at EA and EA's newly formed rivalry with Zynga.

I strongly believe that Bach was forced out after the incidents with Courier and the Kin. In the same suit, I have a deep suspicion that Mattrick also felt the heat from the Xbox One debacles. Best of luck to him in his new role.

Re: Zynga Confirms Xbox Head Don Mattrick As New CEO

#39

Post by pandaman »

kabdib wrote: post #22
JL2010 wrote: post #21

One thing that has gotten lost in the noise of Xbox One's marketing mishap and the targeting of Mattrick is perhaps his history as a true entrepreneur. While it hasn't shown so lately, Don does come from a grassroots background in gaming as a former 17 year old co-founder and programmer of Distinctive Software in 1982. His company was acquired by EA which likely put him on the path to executive level success. A kind…

Passion for gaming is great. He has a /lot/ of that. However: Not a very good technical leader, extremely isolated from the troops (even the principal ones who are designing the new products) which badly affected direction and morale, and very bad at messaging (which I suspect is the /real/ reason he's going). Of course, what replaces him could be worse.

> and very bad at messaging (which I suspect is the /real/ reason he's going).

Was not he the guy who pushed for Kinect? I am not aware much about MS's internal politics but the timeline seems to match.

If so, then the real reason, in my humble opinion, is this: Microsoft is now about to fight for the 8th generation with an underpowered yet $100 more expensive console.

Re: Zynga Confirms Xbox Head Don Mattrick As New CEO

#40

Post by ekianjo »

JL2010 wrote: post #21

One thing that has gotten lost in the noise of Xbox One's marketing mishap and the targeting of Mattrick is perhaps his history as a true entrepreneur. While it hasn't shown so lately, Don does come from a grassroots background in gaming as a former 17 year old co-founder and programmer of Distinctive Software in 1982. His company was acquired by EA which likely put him on the path to executive level success. A kind…

> A True Entrepreneur

Ha. You don't remember Distinctive Software I guess. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distinctive_Software#Notable_g...

A company specialized in (not so good) ports on virtually anything they could port stuff on. There were tons of companies doing ports at the time, and Distinctive Software wasn't the best one, that's for sure.

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