Currently Online 
| EspadaGrim said: I'm actually happy that Matt Botty is now in charge of Zenimax too, the FTC emails shows that is very competitive unlike Pete Hines. |
The FTC emails really did show a side to Booty which he hasn't shown in public. He is really competitive, almost cut-throat, it was funny to see him swearing in email too, Lol. I know some don't like that personality but I think the balance is important to have someone like that to contrast others, his competitive spirit shows how much he cares as well.
I think he gets more shit than he deserves, he only became Head of XGS around 5 years ago in 2018, Matt had to regrow XGS from basically scratch but had to do that during COVID smashing development schedules too and being unable to actually visit the teams for years so some things went unnoticed. He has to work with over a dozen studios during that chaos and many of them needed quickly staffing up (to move to AAA) whilst retaining their culture. Many had prior commitments that needed to be released first as well. To me, it seems like he has mostly succeeded in doing a lot of that, I rarely see, if any, complaints about Matt Booty from actual XGS employees, I also think his summits are a really good idea.
Under him, XGS won publisher of the year in 2021 and has released multiple 90+ titles and in recent history has been averaging an 80+ critic average per year, Redfall had nothing to do with him and without that, almost all their titles over the past few years have been 70+ critic scoring. The only issue is a lack of AAAs and 2022 but I honestly don't think it would matter who was in charge regarding the lack of AAAs...The investment from Microsoft came too late, it only started around 2017-2018 and like I said a few studios had prior commitments, a few had only recently released something, a few were staffing up for AAA, I don't think any of us can spawn AAA's from thin air, game development, especially AAA, is nowadays a 4-6 year average.
Since 2020.
- Bleeding Edge - 66
- Minecraft Legends - 70
- Battletoads - 73
- Minecraft Dungeons - 74
- As Dusk Falls - 78
- Tell Me Why - 81
- Gears Tactics - 83
- Grounded - 83
- Age of Empires IV - 83
- Forza Motorsport - 84
- Halo Infinite - 86
- Pentiment - 86
- Psychonauts 2 - 89
- Ori and the Will of the Wisps - 90
- Microsoft Flight Simulator - 92
- Forza Horizon 5 - 92
Average of 81.8
I think we need to see Matt Booty about 3 years from now to actually be able to judge his record to a full extent but if the man was hated or anything internally then it's unlikely he would be getting promoted. He seems to have done a good job at keeping the XGS happy. People can blame him for Infinite but fact is Infinite released in a great state, to high reviews and was loved on launch, they screwed the post-launch up but many of 343's issues predate Matt Booty and go all the way back to Halo 5 or prior and if you're going to criticise Matt for Halo Infinite without actually knowing what went down then I can praise him for being the first dude to restructure 343 instead of letting things fester and praise him for the turnaround 343 is now having under Pierre's leadership.
Last edited by Ryuu96 - on 27 October 2023
