Anyone liked the Don Mattrick era better than Phil Spencer?

[thismeintiel]

Ka-pi96 said:

Let's see. Xbox 360 released in 2005, mattrick took over in July 2007. People generally seem to say Xbox started off the gen well but PS3 was the one kicking ass by the end.

So Xbox 360 started off with some great ideas, followed that up with some great exclusives and really good 3rd party support, even from Japanese devs. All the great exclusives around the 2007/8 period (Halo 3, Mass Effect, Lost Odyssey, Tales of Vesperia to name a few) would have surely been planned out well ahead of time (ie. before mattrick arrived). Then after he arrives those kind of games go off the rails (Halo 3 to Halo 4) stop being exclusive (Mass Effect) or stop coming to Xbox (JRPGs). He would have been the one that scrapped Xbox's Japanese support. The one that decided not to purchase Bioware and let EA get them instead. The one that oversaw the decline of Halo.

So in short mattrick fucked up Xbox long before he came out with that terrible Xbox One idea. Phil may be all talk, no action. But compared to mattrick... he's still fucking fantastic!

The beginning of the 360 was not great.  Sure, they tried harder in Japan, but it didn't work.  And not only did you have some horribly rushed HW that lead to RROD, but the 360 did less than 8M in its first 2 years on the market.  In comparison, the $200 more expensive PS3 did over 9M in its first 2 years.  The Mattrick era oversaw the revision on HW to fix RROD and the release of the 3 tier 360 model that led it to sell 11M in 2008.  It also sold on par with the first 2 years in just 2007, when he took over.  And while I dislike the Kinect, you can not ignore that it lead to increased interest and sales in the 360.  Basically, the beginning of the 360 era was fucked up.  The middle was good.  And then the ending sucked, too, since MS was focusing more on getting ready for the XBO and far less exclusives were launching.

Of course, just like with the XBO launch, Mattrick was only one spoke on the wheel that really helped and then hurt the Xbox brand.  Ballmer was ultimately in charge.  Spencer played his part in all of that, too.  He wasn't exactly the mail guy when all of this went down.  As someone said in another thread, Spencer just seems like a yes man who is just better at PR than Mattrick.  Mattrick just became the scapegoat to easily push aside the bad policies, as if he was the only one at MS who liked them and OKed them.