Warning: It’s a horrible excuse.
LATimes.com -
Turns out that Bungie’s latest Halo project was originally part of the program for Microsoft’s press conference on Monday, but it was taken out of the lineup at the last minute. Don Mattrick, senior vice president of Microsoft’s Xbox games business, said the company decided to pull Halo …
… to help trim its E3 presentation to under 90 minutes, from 2 1/2 hours, to accommodate attention-challenged reporters.
“We had an embarrassment of riches,” Mattrick said. “We felt we could do this game more justice with a more dedicated event.”
Bungie, which was acquired by Microsoft in 2000, split from the software giant last year but agreed to give Microsoft first dibs on publishing its games.
For Microsoft, the decision was a blow but not a critical hit. Although the Halo games have contributed over a billion dollars in sales for the Redmond, Washington, giant, the company is less reliant on the franchise than it once was. The first Halo game cemented Xbox as the console of choice for many serious gamers at a time when Microsoft was just entering the market and struggling to earn respect. Halo 3, released in September, singlehandedly pulled Microsoft’s console division into the black for the fiscal year ending in June, giving the division its first profit since entering the market in 2001.
So Microsoft’s decision to pull Halo from its presentation led to quite a bit of head scratching.
Mattrick put a positive spin on the development, saying that Microsoft had managed to build such a solid foundation that it no longer needed to depend on one or two games to succeed. He noted that the company also left out Grand Theft Auto IV. Microsoft snagged exclusive content for the game that will be made available to its Xbox 360 players this fall.
“Two big kahunas were left out of the show, and we were still able to deliver a strong performance,” Mattrick said.
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First of all, this guy is an idiot. I’ve never liked Don Mattrick from the moment he came to Microsoft last year and took over Peter Moore’s role as the Xbox boss. Can you imagine Peter Moore pulling some kind of stunt like this? No, he never would have, cause he loved the gamers, and always had a genuine care for them ever since his Sega days. This Mattrick guy though, is the former Worldwide President of EA Games, and that pretty much explains everything right there. This guy doesn’t care about the gamers, never has, and never will. Does this guy think that gamers and the gaming media are so stupid that they can’t handle a little bit more news coming out of a press briefing? 100% Arrogance.
Without Bungie, the Xbox brand would be most likely dead right now, and if not, they certainly wouldn’t be where they are right now. How does Microsoft and the Xbox team thank them for that? They **** all over Bungie’s new announcement that they were having a blast hyping us all up for for the last several months…and then they leak the project to the media.
Related:
08.08.07 - More EA @ MS (and Ubisoft)
07.17.07 - Peter Moore Resigns From Microsoft, Goes To EA Sports
10.11.07 - The EA Cancer Continues to Spread