Don Mattrick was a hack

Seriously, such terrible mismanagement from Xbox division at the time(2012). Look at how potential awesome a Fable 4 could've been

Blatantly stolen post from Neogaf

also this bullshit here

WTF???

I'm glad that they threw him out, cause he's really damaged Xbox alot.

Glad that Phil Spencer is atleast trying his best to make a turn around, for greenlighting Games of varied Genres.

For hacks such as don Mattrick, games were only a "service", he is mostly at fault for the Halo/Gears/Forza and Kinect, Kinect, kinect shenanigans

Cancelled potential Banjo threeie and turned it into some mediocre racing game.

Cancelled many other potentially great projects, in favor of pushing Kincect shovelware.

*sigh* I'm really annoyed right now

Don Mattrick was the best. Padlock this mods.

Fable 4 was going to be awful. Don't you worry your pretty little head about that.

Don Matrick completely lost focus on what Xbox was all about, it wasn't a console for him anymore, it was a platform to get families hooked with...something...so yeah, glad he left.

About Fable 4...well, i only played the first one and it was kind of meh...even if they had another shot, i doubt they will recreate the Mass Effect or Elder Scrolls success.

Phil Spencer already admitted to be part of everything the xbox was when Mattrick was there.

There is no Mattrick is guilty Phil is innocent,they are the FACE of the xbox brand behind them there is a higher pay grade who take those busyness decisions for them.

Don mattrick was all about closing down murdering studios and focusing on kids and families with Kinect.

Phil is still cleaning up the mess he made:

Fable? The series was always overhyped by xbox fans because they always had very little quality offer from MS 1st party so every game slightly above mediocrity was good by their standards. Fable 4 would still be meh, just like every other game in the series before it

Fable 2 was pretty fun back in the day, but man it does not age well. F3 was ... tolerable.

Mattrick would destroy games for everyone if we'd just give him the chance.

Yeah definitely glad Phil took over. Someone who 'gets' the Xbox brand.

And he took Zynga down with him. Word is he was rarely around the Xbox campus

Do you guys really believe that Mattrick would've greenlit games like Recore, Scalebound, Phantom Dust(rip?) or Ori and the Blind forest? Hell no, glad he is gone. I heard that things went downhill for zynga as well, when he was in charge

He was not a gamer, just a suit.

Phil is doing great. We should call the next xbox, P3(his gamer tag, or XboxP3 on twitter) in his honor.

He single handedly drove the Xbox name to the ground and ruined it before leaving. Phil Spencer came in and saved the day.

I don't think saved is the right word to use, salvage maybe, then used the scraps for PC.

Fable always sucked. Even xbots stopped hyping that trash after 1 and 2 failed to meet expectations and they swept 3 under the rug like it never existed. Lionhead was always great at pitching cool ideas. They just couldn't deliver on their promises and that's why they got shut down.

Fable was a good series (the original still the best in my eyes), in spite of it never resonating with me.

The Xbox brand was at its peak during Mattrick's tenure, though I'm still of the mind that Allard and the original OGs are more to credit for that than anybody (Peter Moore, for example). Mattrick's made the numbers look great, but he never struck me as somebody who actually understood gamers or the industry. But hey, he ran a billion-level division and I'm a guy with just over 12k posts :P

He was the best thing to happen to Sony.

There's a silver lining in everything.

Xboxone has gone through so many transitions because of the blunder pre-launch. It went from-

1. the-don state

2. first post-don state

3. "we will never get rid of mandatory kinect"

4. to we got rid of kinect (post-kinect world)

5. to its current iteration as a poor mans windows 10 device.

I have never seen so much backtracking and changes done to a console in less than 3 years of launch.

Fable 4 would have been a great edition to the library.

Where sher he take his expertise next....Sony?

Dude was hilarious. 1 part awkward, 1 part disconnected.

I bet he's a serial killer.

He's the sole reason why the Xbox first party is in stagnation. By the 7th gen they should have ALREADY had a solid first party like Sony. By the 6th gen the PS4 had already finished developing their first party. MS is still trying to do what Sony did during the PS2 era...

And hate on Phil all you want but he is at least trying to build the Xbox first party which is a MUST for Xbox owners.

I agree and I would of played 4 no problem. They had a certain charm that I liked.

Fable 1 was hyped to an enormous degree. I remember the OXM issue back in like 2002 hyping it, and it looked AMAZING. Fable wasn't really like that, or even close, but I still think it was a fantastic game. Fable 2 was a real estate simulator, with stripped away rpg elements, added guns which sucked some of the soul out of it, and even eliminated armor. It was an over simplified mess, and Fable 3 was even worse. Fable 4 would have sucked, especially with their track record of "That game was awesome, now let's take away everything that made it fun!" and all the fart smellers followed suite.

Hey. HEY.

Don't you dare fucking badmouth Nuts & Bolts. The decision to make that game was entirely Rare's (there was little of the Banjo squad who made the first two games left at the studio anyways, all they did was control the IP) and it, for what it was (a puzzle-racing-platformer, a very unique mashup) it was great.

That was one of the games that hooked me on the 360 (the other was Dead Rising) and it was a VERY unique game last gen amongst all the brown, "cinematic" shooters.

Loved Fable, was one of the reasons I bought Xboxes. Its all subjective. Quite a few think it was "always mediocre" LOL You want mediocrity? Fukin Final Fantasy, turn based, spiky haired shyte. All subjective to the individual.

Yeah I'd definitely say that if it was Phil instead of Don we would've had better Xbox Days then we have had the last couple of years because Phil is still frking repairing the atomic bomb that was planted by Mattrick.

imo, fable should've been closer to the original where you didnt spam spells freely and you had an interesting storyline.

I really enjoyed the story and the gameplay, totally ruined in fable 3 but fable 2 was tolerable.

@foxhound_fox: it wasn't by Rare's decision

Also that game wasn't a banjo game, id rather play the actual platformer banjo games. Average racer, bad banjo game

It was a great game. At what it did. If you went in expecting a proper 3D collect-a-thon, that's your problem. From the early previews, it was clearly not that. And it did Banjo humour and the collect-a-thon thing very well.

Go buy Yooka-Laylee when it comes out. That's being made by the same people who did the first two Banjo games and is a proper 3D platformer.

Fable was a series with potential that never delivered, mechanically the first one was fun but ended early and the end of the game choice was cheap. The 2nd game continued the ending tradition, and Peter Molyneux failed to deliver on the promises he made regarding the nature of the game, its online and social integrated features, so it wasn't a fully realized game. Fable 3 just sounded bad and I didn't even bother and don't regret it to this day. The series went downhill obviously. The MMO was sad since it was suppoedly close to being complete, but it kept getting delayed. Personally, I think canning Lionhead served its purpose, it put everyone at Microsoft on notice that they want results, and their financial resources aren't unconditional. Let's face it though, Fable's time is done. In some ways, even though Molyneux over-promised and never delivered, he was a dreamer, and the studio just seems soulless without him at the helm.

Regardless, of who was involved this is pretty crappy. To me, it sounds like a solid idea as long as they got what they asked for. 4 years of development along with a good budget? I'm sure that studio could of put out something pretty solid.

Don Mattrick was a piece of shit and lems wanted to pretend he was a Jack Tretton, a Kaz Hirai

Don was for XBOX what Phil Harrison was for the PS3

Fable 1 was decent, everything after was pretty meh. I do agree, Phil Spencer should have been the head of Xbox instead of Don Mattrick. The X1 would currently be a totally different console if this was the case.

@trollhunter2: coulda shoulda woulda....

BUT DIDNT

Don was the most entertaining person i've seen in anything gaming related. I'm sad that he left MS. I'd like to see him damage control the 4:1 sales ratio we're currently experiencing against the superior console, the ps4.

You make it sound like Zynga wasn't already a sinking ship before his term. All he did was board a ship already sinking, and walked off before it completely sunk

Seems like I wasn't the only one

Those early years were magical, and varied

Scalebound and Phnatom Dust were announced while Mattrick was running the show. Microsoft's questionable decision making hasn't exactly been cleaned up, so far Spencer just has a better PR voice.

I miss Peter Moore. I feel the xbox brand was much more exciting when he was involved. Ever since he left for EA, the xbox division has become very tame and doesn't really make their consoles standout anymore.