N'Gai Croal
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Jul 17, 2007 04:15 PM
In what could best be described as a slow motion game of musical chairs, Microsoft yesterday announced that corporate vice president for entertainment and devices Peter Moore
will leave the company in September to assume the job of label
president of EA Sports for Electronic Arts. Replacing Moore at
Microsoft is EA's former president of worldwide studios Don Mattrick,
who is currently serving as an external adviser to the entertainment and devices group at Microsoft. (Got that? Good--there may be a quiz later.)
We were briefed by executives at both Microsoft and Electronic Arts; Moore himself, however, was not on either call. Robbie Bach,
president of the entertainment and devices division--and Moore's
boss--said that he was sorry to see Moore leave, but that Moore wanted
to move his family back to the Bay Area. We inquired of Bach whether
there was any connection between Moore's departure and the recent
announcement of the Xbox 360's hardware flaws; he flatly denied it.
When asked why he decided to step off the sidelines and back into the
game, incoming Xbox chief Mattrick--whose title will be senior vice
president--said that as far as he was concerned, the opportunity was
too strong to pass up.
EA CEO John Riccitiello
gave us Electronic Arts' side of the corporate do-si-do. He explained
that he'd tried to recruit Moore to EA on a couple of occasions in the
late '90s and early 2000s, praising Moore as the toughest competitor
that EA Sports had ever faced, as well as for his work on both software
and hardware at Microsoft. We're still trying to suss out what all of
this means, but at first glance, Microsoft has brought in a respected
industry veteran to fill Moore's shoes, while EA appears to have
assembled the deepest bench of executive talent of any third party publisher. Caveat competitor.
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