The “father” of original Xbox says that the former Microsoft boss Don Mattrick didn’t have any faith in the company’s success with gaming. Seamus Blackley, the creator of Xbox has now shared this story for the first time.
Seamus Blackley says that he presented the idea of Xbox to Mattrick, the then executive at EA Canada. Blackley called this whole meeting “tense” and the idea was nearly ejected as Mattrick didn’t have any faith in its success. It doesn’t end there as Blackley claims that Mattrick also tried to stop the computer giant but luckily they remained fully committed.
I’ve never talked about this before, but the irony of Don Mattrick as Xbox Chief was huge for me. When I first came to EA Canada to present the idea of a Microsoft console, he nearly blocked me from addressing the company because he didn’t believe it was possible. It was tense.
He also commented on a quote: We have a product for people who aren’t able to get some form of connectivity; it’s called Xbox 360.
That hurt me to hear. I always felt that we were partners with Xbox gamers. We had to stick together to make it work.
It’s funny as Mattrick eventually became the head of the company which started with the release of Xbox in 2001. This can be considered as another bad decision by Mattrick who’s known for the disappointing launch of Xbox One.
During his time, the console focused on multimedia capabilities like streaming TV and movies but many fans took it as Microsoft’s excuse to turn away from gaming.
The online-always feature was also represented during his time and was reversed when he left the company to become CEO of Zynga. However, it was too late to do as the console suffered poor sales at launch.
As a result, many fans are glad that Mattrick left and was replaced by Phil Spencer in 2013. The current situation of the company is better than ever before. Spencer stays committed on bringing Xbox Game Pass to all platforms despite the expected loss of hardware sales.
The company wants to bring Xbox Game Pass to any device that someone would like to play on and wants to help the business grow further by selling access to video games.
E3 2019 is going to be another big event for the company. Microsoft Corporation is expected to announce new first-party titles at the event and Halo Infinite will be also part of the event which is rumored to be a launch title for Next Xbox.
