Real talk, I've held these beliefs for years now and even I didn't voice them that much because I knew I'd be dogpiled for insinuating that meany doo-doo head Jim Ryan or the TVTVSportsTVKinect guy were better at their jobs then our lord and savior Phillip "Mr. Video Games" Spencer was.
These last few days have really made me reevaluate my opinions on Mattrick. In a lot of ways, he was the right guy for the time when it came to the twilight years of the 360. The Kinect legitimately probably the most successful (in terms of sales and financially) peripheral released for a console, and there's no doubt that it significantly increased the 360's sales for those last 3 years.
His trouble was that he couldn't see how short lived the Kinect's success was. In some ways, that's simply an error of inertia. While the Xbox One was in development, the Kinect was selling amazingly well. From that perspective, it would have made a ton of sense to pack in a next-gen version with their next-gen system. But given how long consoles take to develop and release, by the time the Xbox One finally did come out, that Kinect audience was gone. Sony made a similar error with the PS Vita. It was a device that made a lot more sense in the time it was being developed, but not when it was released; a point in time when smartphones had eaten into their market.
Similarly, from Mattrick's point of view, it made a lot of sense for the Xbox One to be an "All in One" machine. He was the head of not only Xbox, but the Music and Video divisions of Microsoft, too. To be able to integrate those into a single device - a process that had already begun on the Xbox 360 via updates to the system - seemingly made a lot of sense. At the time the Xbox One would have been in development, the PS3 was pitching itself similarly, with its famous "It Only Does Everything" tagline.
Yet, as much as it makes sense to integrate video and music into a console, the Xbox One was still stuck in the past, similarly to how it was with Kinect. There was a big focus on being able to integrate your cable or satellite into it...during the heyday of Netflix, when everyone was cord cutting in order to watch everything on there (and to a lesser extent, Hulu). Again, maybe that would have made more sense back in 2010, but just barely. By 2013 that way of thinking was truly outdated.
And in the one area the Xbox One was forward thinking, with its online focused design, they completely flubbed with the Always Online™ check-ins and lack of ability to play used physical games (without at least, jumping through hoops or paying a fee). While some of this might begrudgingly fly (to an extent) in the current year in which physical sales are on the decline, and consoles are (more or less) required to have an internet connection in order to access many functions, it was a decade too early in 2013.
This is also to say nothing of the atrocious messaging at the time. "Fortunately we have a product for people who aren't able to get some form of connectivity, it's called Xbox 360," will probably live on in infamy forever.
Yet even despite how everything ended, you can at least tell there was some sort of vision behind the Xbox One for what Mattrick wanted it to be. He wanted a console that you could control via voice commands, could be integrated directly into your existing entertainment hub so that you'd never need to change the channel, and could do everything digitally. It was a bold vision, ambitious in many ways, and also extremely flawed and out of touch. But even so, that's a lot more than you can say for what the Xbox Series is supposed to be, especially currently in which it seems like there is no vision for what the brand is supposed to be.
Mattrick said a few years back that he wishes he had been able to stay and execute his vision for what he wished the Xbox One to be, and I can't help but be curious as to where Xbox would be now if he had been able to. Would it be better off? Maybe not, but the fact that the current outlook makes one question that says a lot about the state of things now.
That's not to say that Mattrick's final years prior to the Xbox One launch were all that great either. It's well known that focus shifted from titles like quirky titles like Ninety-Nine Nights or Too Human completely to Kinect titles and core games like Halo and Gears of War. Yet, even that looks rosy in comparison to now. The last Gears game came out 5 years ago at this point.
But even so, the first couple years of the Xbox One were pretty packed. There was Dead Rising 3, Ryse: Son of Rome, Killer Instinct, Zoo Tycoon, Fighter Within, and Forza Motorsport 5 for exclusives at launch. The quality of the games obviously was all over the place, but it was a decent variety of different types of games you couldn't find elsewhere. And games like Sunset Overdrive and D4: Dark Dreams Don't Die which both came out in 2014 had to have been greenlit under his watch. Even ReCore which released in 2016 would have been started during the end of his tenure. Plus, Scalebound also started under Mattrick, but he wasn't the one who killed it. Points for that, if nothing else.
tl;dr: Mattrick was a shitty head of Xbox, who nonetheless had an idea of where he wanted to take the brand and had a few major successes along the way. The fact that we're now able to look back at his tenure with even an ounce of nostalgia is both hilarious and depressing all the same.
www.resetera.com
www.gamesindustry.biz
