Would Microsoft Just Fire Don Mattrick Already?

The Mattrick Offense

With the unveiling of the Xbox One a few weeks ago, it’s clear what Mattrick and his crew have been doing behind the scenes for so many years: rehearsing. Mattrick isn’t just a powerful man at Microsoft, he has a reputation through out the entertainment industry. He, along with Xbox’s new entertainment producer Nancy Tellen, were able to wrangle in Steven Spielberg to produce a Halo TV show when that Peter Jackson thing didn’t work out.

The Xbox One’s requirement to dial into Xbox Live every 24 hours sparked a lot of controversy and it’s when Mattrick spoke off the cuff that Microsoft appeared to be at their weakest, implying that future Xbox One owners aboard submarines should buy an Xbox 360 instead of their new console. As a military brat and technocrat, I stand by both our armed forces and the Xbox One’s once digital future, but Mattrick’s response was uncouth for an executive.

The problem is that Mattrick and his PR team aren’t saying enough. In fact, they’re saying so little in not communicating their intentions with the console that disgruntled engineers are emerging from the woodwork to deliver the message that Mattrick should have, only anonymously through Pastebin and Github. Mattrick appears to have lost his grip on gaming reality as positions his console as an ‘all-in-one entertainment’ device rather than the games machine that’s robust, powerful and far-seeing enough to cater to all your needs anyway. Even as Mattrick’s name lies on the apology note that accompanies their DRM reversal this week, it’s hard to say how much of that was him when there’s so little is him when he’s in a physical, public location.

The trajectory of Mattrick from a very promising game developer to an exec that seems to be stumbling into success seems like the oddest one and Mattrick’s positions may have almost cost his breadwinner the entire race. I just wonder if Ballmer can see that.