What has Don Mattrick left behind at Microsoft?

Don Mattrick has left Microsoft’s Xbox division and taken over at Zynga, after founder Mark Pincus stepped away from the day-to-day running in favour of product development.

Mattrick’s departure isn’t really a surprise, but not because of the Xbox One policy content. These sorts of massive company changes aren’t decided over a cup of tea and looks like it may have been in the works for the most part of 2013. Mattrick didn’t really have anywhere to go in Microsoft; being as close to Steve Ballmer without taking his job. Don didn’t really hit the stage at E3, compared to his previous outings, and looks a bit blase about the hardware delivery.

The timing though may not be such a coincidence. Microsoft took a heavy beating since it’s Xbox One reveal on 21^st May, and, assuming Mattrick’s departure was already in motion, the company simply allowed him to leave before his notice period was over. This gave soft a chance to reduce any lingering toxic feelings from their policies.

It’s difficult to judge Don’s time with the company either, at least until the Xbox One has launched, but his impact over the six year Xbox 360 tenure has been pretty pronounced. Probably his most impressive feat was the increase in revenue and production of steady profits to the Interactive Entertainment Business Division – especially after it had made losses for many years ahead of his arrival.

Mattrick staked his early reputation on user acquisition, especially from the Sony market, and for all intents and purposes he’s done that. The Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 have both sold just a few less than 80 million units – however the Microsoft console reigns supreme in most of the territories outside of Asia. The Xbox Live user base at the time of his arrival was a few million at most and is now nearly 50 million.

Since his arrival the company have broadened their horizons and pushed themselves, gradually, into the entertainment market. While Sony sit on their gaming morals, Microsoft have ventured into multimedia territory; signing indie developers and global partners like Sky TV and Netflix.

Probably the only area where Mattrick did suffer was for his love of the games themselves. Even with his 25 years over at EA he still didn’t manage to focus on the core owners of the console. He didn’t interact with the crowd like his predecessor, Peter Moore, and this was particularly evident in the lack of successful new first-party games.

Star franchises like Halo, Gears of War, Fable and Forza Motorsport remained popular, but there has been a distinct shortage of new IP’s. Even the new 343 Industries studio, which he helped create, were set to build primarily for Halo sequels and game off an uninspiring decision for most gamers - even if Halo 4 was exceptional.

He also wasn’t one to speak to the industry press either, which is probably a good thing if he had no interest in keeping the product as a Video Game ‘only’ system. His comments have often been harsh and unfair – publicly slating Halo creators Bungie, after they broke free of Microsoft in 2008 and withheld Halo 3: ODST from the yearly E3 conference. More recently he suggested that gamers upset about the Xbox One’s Internet policy ‘could by an Xbox 360 instead’. Didn’t he have a way with words?

Personally I felt that his biggest impact came in the form of the Kinect (previously Project Natal) hardware. The new technology is both innovative and revolutionary but his implementation was still off. Kinect ‘1.0’ for the Xbox 360 was rush into market, when there were surely experienced voices in the company advising him that the product wasn’t ready. Mattrick really wanted to catch the Autumn sales period and since then the industry has joked about its delivery.

Lionhead, who were an expensive acquisition under his leadership, worked on a pair of Kinect games, but their more ambitious title ‘Milo & Kate’ never made it to market. Instead we got the enjoyable, but very underdeveloped, Fable: The Journey. In fact no killer game has been created to hand the technology on – only the Kinect Sports and Dance Central games have had any impact on the market.

To put it plainly; the Kinect just wasn’t very good when it launched and, now with the Xbox One just around the corner, you can’t expect it to pick up many sales. The Kinect 2.0 capabilities though, which were shown off at this year’s E3 presentation, is very encouraging. The hardware is more responsive, maps more joints and is genuinely looking like the product it always intended. However, the new policy to make this a standard feature for the Xbox One has cause issues with various privacy advocates, who object to have a camera and microphone turned on 24/7 – let alone the fact that the Kinect can ‘see you in the dark’.

Looking over his tenure it’s hard to escape the fact that his is a businessman above all else and didn’t have the connection with the consumers that someone in his position, and specifically in the industry, that is needed to do well. He had a vision and he went for it, even though the public, and his colleagues,  ‘sometimes’ shouted about how bad it was.

Obviously we won’t really know whether he truly achieved brilliance until the Xbox One, the first console built under his leadership, has been released. It’s an all-in-one entertainment offering and it’s certainly been moulded to fit his ideas.