A former XBOX employee has reopened an old can of worms about the company’s management.
Veteran game developer Dan Callan shared this story on Bluesky:
I have very distinct memories of having to demo Halo 4 for Don Mattrick and realizing that these people just live on different planes of reality
I was showing off my mission and when the Mantis showed up with its new cool intro vignette he raised his hand and said to the group –
“Has anyone here played… Diablo 3?” He then went on to suggest we should copy their idea of a real money auction house for campaign mech skins
Dan then says everyone around Don had to pretend it was a good idea in spite of knowing better. Dan ends this as an example of how out of touch executives are from the video game industry.
While this may look like a criticism of XBOX given recent events, Dan was recently laid off from Bungie by its final permanent owners, PlayStation. But perhaps Dan has a point on how this applies to the industry as a whole.
