Microsoft has confirmed that its Interactive Entertainment Business (IEB) president Don Mattrick has quit the company after five years at the helm and has joined Zynga as CEO. At Zynga, Mark Pincus will relinquish the CEO position, but will retain the post of chairman and chief product officer. Also Read - Microsoft Mesh introduced; lets users appear as holograms in virtual meetings
Mattrick begins work at Zynga next Monday and will also join the company’s board. AllThingsD is reporting that Mattrick was looking for a new job for sometime, and his search further hastened when talk about Steve Ballmer’s major restructuring gathered pace. Also Read - Clubhouse will be soon available for Android users, confirms co-founder
Mattrick joined Microsoft from EA in 2007, and under his leadership the Xbox 360 became the number one console in North America and Xbox Live members grew from 6 million to 48 million users. Also Read - Microsoft testing Xbox Cloud Gaming Windows app; moving to Xbox Series X architecture
Recently he found himself in the middle of the Xbox One DRM policy controversy, which led to Sony pulling a coup at E3 and coming off looking better than Microsoft. Only last week he announced that Microsoft had reverted to traditional DRM policies for the Xbox One, and it did not need an always on Internet connection, and it was region free.
Steve Ballmer, in a mail to all employees has confirmed that the people who reported directly to Mattrick will now report to him and he was confident that the people at the IEB division could ensure day-to-day operations and successfully ship the Xbox One this holiday season.
