http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2013/07/01/report-microsofts-don-mattrick-taking-key-position-at-zynga.aspx

Do you think the whole drama with the Xbox One caused this? Why is he going somewhere else, especially to a struggling company?

Thoughts?

Did the Xbox One drama cause this? Of course it did. Why is he jumping from one ship to a sinking one? Who knows. I don't touch anything from Zynga so I'm not too concerenced with what he does there.

Thank God. It was making all the wrong moves. DSP (Youtuber) did a good prediction.

He was the one that said if you don't have an online connection, get a 360 right?

AFAIK, only Zynga product I got is Words With Friends on my Kindle.

I am starting to wonder if his "get a 360" comment was a subtle "[censored] you all" before leaving (assuming he had kept this to himself the whole time during E3).

@Shadow: Yes, it was him.

This move to Zynga means he has a desk and a phone for the next 6 months to look for a job. The same thing happened to the CEO of BP. He was moved to a smaller company in the hinterlands of the corporation to live out his contract where he could not mess anything else up.

According to the article, those talks have been going on for a while. If anything, I'd say the Xbox One fiasco is just expediting things.

Zynga probably hired him to turn things around. My guess is his compensation package is loaded with all sorts of incentives and bonuses tied to market performance; if he hits those targets, he'll be a very, very wealthy man. If he doesn't, he won't be at Zynga for very long (and neither will anyone else).

The problem, IMO, is that Zynga's way past the point of being able to turn things around.

When your business model is to make games that can only be played by irritating your "friends" and paying money so you can click some more, no wonder it's doomed.

My money's on forced resignation. The One's PR before, during, and after E3 was just deplorable, and Microsoft is doing everything it can to save face. Similar thing happened to Ken Kutaragi; after the debacle that was the PS3 debut, he got kicked upstairs and eventually resigned as well. At this point, Zynga's the only company that would take him in...mostly because it has little else to fill its own holes.

For me, playing with "friends" = Playing with family

But for most Zynga game players, "friends" = "people who I don't even know who ended up on my Facebook friends list one way or another."

Oh gods... is Zynga the company that makes all those Facebook games? I genuinely hope they go out of business now. I would literally take mirth in their suffering.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zynga, they are the ones responsible for mobile/Facebook games like Words With Friends, Mafia Wars, Farm Ville, etc.

Which is why I avoid facebook games like the plague. I played the Sports Bar one, and then eventually the Stadium Empire...once I maxxed those out I had realized what I already suspected and pretty much knew: FB games svck. Well, Hemp Tycoon was fun when it was still on advlt Swim.com and you could do the windows clock glitch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjZCSHIXKcY

The typical two weeks' notice is more like six months' notice for execs. So this was in the line even before the Xbox One announcement.

He may have been in talks with Zynga beforehand, but if the XBox One launch had been anything other than the utter PR fiasco it turned out to be, he certainly wouldn't be going anywhere.

When it did turn into that fiasco, you can be pretty sure MS told him to either jump ship willingly now, or be made to walk the plank later.

As someone who likes Microsoft and is looking forward to getting the Xbox One: Good riddance.

That is exactly what I thought.

MS was gonna back door him anyway. People in retail knows what that means.

And that's the biggest reason why he's leaving. Microsoft knows how badly the XBox One debut was screwed up, and they want to send their customers a clear message that they acknowledge this, and that they're working to make things right again. What better way to do this than to announce that the division head will soon be "leaving to explore other career opportunities, and we wish him well in his future endeavors"?