Salon.com > xbox

Zynga CEO to step down

Mon, 01 Jul 2013 21:07:00 +0000

NEW YORK (AP) -- Zynga's CEO, Mark Pincus, is stepping down to be replaced by Don Mattrick, the head of Microsoft's Xbox business, as the troubled online game company looks to revive its business and stalled stock price.

The maker of "FarmVille" and other games said Monday that Pincus, who founded Zynga Inc. and named it after his American bulldog in 2007, will stay on as chairman and chief product officer.

Mattrick, 49, has served as the president of Microsoft's entertainment business, which includes the Xbox, since 2010. He's been with Microsoft for six years.

Mattrick faces a difficult task. Zynga's stock is down sharply since the company's 2011 initial public offering at $10 per share. Its games have waned in popularity and it announced in June that it was cutting 520 jobs, or about 18 percent of its workforce, to save money.

Pincus seems to think his successor is up to the task. In a statement, Pincus praised Mattrick as "one of the top executives in the overall entertainment business."

When will video gamers use their power for good?

Sun, 23 Jun 2013 20:00:00 +0000

Being a part of video game culture can be a frustrating exercise. That culture is defined primarily by the magazines, websites, television programs and social events aimed at “gamers,” but even the term "gamer" can be exclusionary; many members of the video game audience reject the notion that people who only play video games on Facebook, smartphones, or tablets could also be gamers, because those other groups don’t primarily gorge on the Hollywood blockbuster, kinesthetic smorgasbords on Microsoft’s Xbox 360 or Sony’s PlayStation 3 video game hardware. Rather than welcome these new video game audiences on social media and smart devices, too many video game players would rather thumb their noses at people who don’t fit a long-held, narrow self-definition.

Video game culture is neither friendly nor accessible to outsiders. It stodgily resists social change and thus continues to relegate gaming as an eccentric hobby within the confines of geek society. And yet the video game public can be extremely powerful when they rally around topics they have communally decided are important. This week they brought one of the most monolithic companies in the world, Microsoft, to its knees through weeks of collective outcry over anti-consumer policies.

Steven Spielberg to produce “Halo” television series

Tue, 21 May 2013 20:41:00 +0000

Toward the end of an unnecessarily long event announcing the first Xbox follow-up in eight years, Xbox One, Microsoft and gaming company 343 Industries revealed that legendary director Steven Spielberg will executive produce a "Halo" live-action television series.

"The World of Halo," based on the massively successful gaming franchise, will be exclusive to Xbox. “For me, the ‘Halo’ universe is an amazing opportunity for the intersection” of “mythmaking and technology,” Spielberg said via video.