microsoft-games-studios posts

Microsoft's division that contains its PC game publishing and online operations has a new leader today. The company announced that Don Mattrick will be the head of its Interactive Entertainment Business operations. Mattrick succeeds Robbie Bach who announced his retirement from Microsoft earlier this year.

Mattrick previous was president of Electronic Arts before joining Microsoft's Xbox division in 2007. He later moved up to senior vice president of the company's Interactive Entertainment Business division. In his new gig, he will be the head of basically all of Microsoft's entertainment operations. That includes the company's Games For Windows business, Games For Windows Live and Microsoft Games Studios. The latter division has gotten more interested in publishing PC games lately with Microsoft announcing that Fable 3, Age of Empires Online and Microsoft Flight are all in the works.

While rumors first hit the internet about Lionhead Studios' upcoming Xbox 360 RPG Fable III's possible PC release earlier this year, a version of the Xbox 360 box art that popped up on the internet (and snagged by our sister site Joystiq before the original source pulled it off their site) seems to confirm that the game will indeed be showing up on Windows. As you can see above the box art clearly shows "Only On Xbox 360 & Windows" on top.

The game's publisher Microsoft, despite the evidence that seems to clearly show a PC version is in the works, has so far still not confirmed that Fable III is being released for the PC. If it is true it would be the first retail PC game Microsoft has released since their PC port of Gears of War came out back in late 2007.

This past Thursday, Microsoft's latest PC operating system, Windows 7, was finally made available to the public via upgrades or new PC's pre-loaded with the OS. We've already talked about what PC gamers should know about Windows 7 and given you a history of Windows PC gaming. We've asked if you should even upgrade to Windows 7 and even given you the opinions of many game developers if they think Windows 7 will boost PC gaming. Now we want to do some speculation and maybe give Microsoft some advice on how they could take the opportunity to improve PC gaming now that they have a fresh new OS to play with.

Check out our ideas for Microsoft after the jump:

Shane Kim has been involved with Microsoft's games division for a long time including a stint as head of their Microsoft Games Studios publishing brand. Now Gamasutra is reporting that Kim plans to retire from his duties at Microsoft by the end of the year.

Kim currently is the corporate vice president, strategy and business development, for Microsoft's Interactive Entertainment Business. Overall, he has been an employee of Microsoft for 19 years. With his departure, Microsoft plans to promote two of their other executives to fill Kim's roles. Phil Spencer will now become corporate vice president of Microsoft Game Studios and Dennis Durkin will be assigned to the newly created role of COO of Microsoft's Interactive Entertainment Business division.

Microsoft is planning to do what Apple did successfully and what Dell and Gateway failed to do; launch a retail store chain. The company announced on Thursday that they have hired a 25 year veteran of Wal Mart to lead the creation of a series of Microsoft branded retail stores.

Details on what the stores will have are scarce at this point but the new head of the division, David Porter, is supposed to work "in close partnership with leaders of existing retail programs in Microsoft's Entertainment & Devices Division." That division includes the Games For Windows program and Microsoft's own game development division, Microsoft Games Studios.

While we have no doubt that Microsoft will be selling Xbox 360 consoles, games and accessories in their future stores, will the company also be selling their own PC games and games branded with the Games For Windows banner? Considering that MIcrosoft seems to be going out of its way to cut their PC game operations with the shut down of Ensemble Studios and ACES Studio it remains an open question if they will be putting PC games in their stores.

On Thursday Microsoft announced plans to cut up to 5,000 positions in the next 18 months, with 1,400 people cut that day. Now Gamasutra reports that the company's ACES Studio, best known for their work on the long running Flight Simulator PC game series, has been hit with job reductions. The story claims through unnamed sources that the entire Flight Simulator team may have been shut down entirely.

If true this could signal an end to the game series which began way back in 1982 and remains the oldest PC game franchise to have continued regular releases. The last game in the franchise was released in 2006 with an expansion in 2007 The ACES team was also working on a new Microsoft Rail Simulator game. There's no official word if that project has been canceled because of the job cuts.

Meanwhile our sister site Joystiq reports that at least two members of the Microsoft Gamerscore blog team have also been let go. The Gamerscore blog site was the company's community source for news about their PC and Xbox game plans. However a few days ago it was announced that the blog site was closing down and it now appears that the site's team, rather than just moving to other Microsoft duties, will now be let go entirely.

Ever since the Entertainment Software Association announced their plans to go back to a larger trade show version of E3 in 2009, many have wondered if game publishers will fully embrace going back to a bigger event. Well, a clue to one of those exhibitor's plans was given in a recent Microsoft podcast show.

Major Nelson's most recent podcast included a chat with Microsoft Games Studios general manager Phil Spencer who indicates that after a meeting where they are planning their E3 2009 plans. According to Spencer, "There's a lot of stuff on the docket, and maybe we'll break the bank a little bit and talk about things that are further out, which will hopefully get the community excited." We hope that Microsoft decides to talk more about their Games For Windows plans at E3 2009.They decided to almost ignore the PC format at their E3 2008 press conference.

In the US, when a game is released for the PC and Xbox 360 at the same time (BioShock is a good example), the Xbox 360 version always outsells the PC version by a huge margin. But that's not the case in Germany, according to a rep from Microsoft Games Studios Europe. In an article at Gamesindustry.biz Peter Zetterberg, business development manager for MGS Europe, says releasing an Xbox 360 game alongside an PC port doesn't work in Germany

According to Zetterberg, "If we launch a game that is on 360 and PC simultaneously, we basically shoot ourselves in the foot by allowing the German market to choose to play the PC version – because they are more likely to buy that than spend their money on the Xbox 360. If we launched a Halo game on PC and 360 in Germany simultaneously, 80 per cent of sales would be on the PC."

Wow. 80 percent? That's almost hard to believe. Clearly there's no such issue like piracy or hardware issues in Germany like there is in North America in terms of selling PC games. Zetterberg also states Microsoft is looking into developing smaller and more independent PC games as well as titles that have some kind of social networking features, " . . . not an MMO but a social network, where you play games, you meet, and interact – that's definitely something we're looking at."