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Microsoft shakes up E&D Division: Bach, Allard out, David Treadwell in

By on May 25, 2010 6:32 PM
8 comments

In an email to employees this morning, Microsoft has announced that Entertainment and Devices President Robbie Bach and Senior Vice President J Allard will be leaving the company in a shake-up of the division that includes Xbox, Zune, and mobile communications.

Bach will retire in September after 22 years with the company, after delivering a profitable business for Xbox, a product line that once lost millions. J Allard will continue to advise Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer on incubation efforts, design and UI, and other projects.

The shake-up will not replace Bach, but instead put Don Mattrick, who heads the interactive entertainment business, and Andy Lees, heading mobile communications, reporting directly to Ballmer.  In addition, Windows Live Platform Services Corporate Vice President David Treadwell, a familiar name to LiveSide readers for his work on Live Mesh and the Windows Live platform, will take on a new role in IEB, leading the core technology org.

Kotaku.com has the full email, and TechFlash has more, including an upcoming Q&A with Robbie Bach.

Posted in News | Tags: , ,

Comments

  • pjcurnan

    If you look at the companies that Microsoft is losing to they are all led by technology people. Time for Ballmer to go.

    http://blog.wildmousesoftware.com/2010/05/new-shakeup-at-microsoft-time-for.html

  • JohnCz

    I think folks will read into this way to much. Re:Allard, well Courier was probably going to cost to much, take to long to bring to market. XBox is in great hands with Don Mattrick. And Windows Phone 7 is shaping up very nicely..we should have some announcements in the next couple of weeks. One area that Microsoft has misstepped this year is with slates. At CES, Balmer came out during his keynote and tied Windows 7 with Slates. I love Windows 7 but its UI is not ideal for smallish touch devices. The last thing Microsoft needs is to leave it up to OEMs to put a proper UI on it. Thats part of the WM fiasco that predated WP7. Please oh Please bring “Metro” UI to slates. Expanding WP7 to support it is probably the quickest path to accomplishing that.

  • Guest

    Does anyone know if Spaces will exist in Wave 4? & if there will be any updates to it? It seems its the only service in windows live that doesn’t get updated in the Wave Updates. Any idea why?

    • lolwut

      Probably, just downplayed

    • bizarre

      MSFT is not getting much traction with Windows Live Spaces. When the whole social networking thing got started, Spaces was a great idea. Now, it’s simply not a compelling product. Liveside.net used to be on Spaces too!

      • http://www.LiveSide.net Kip Kniskern – LiveSide.net

        We still have a “Space”, at http://windowsliveside.spaces.live.com/, but we have always had an independent site, we were never “on” Spaces as our main site. We haven’t heard much about Spaces either, it definitely seems to be on the back burner. One *guess* is that it would take a LOT of resources to rebuild Spaces into a standards compliant modern blog service, and to be honest just not enough people use it to make that worthwhile. It’s still around though.

        • Chris

          it also has a lot of spammers/.

  • http://about.me/mackenzieprice mackenziepricee

    J was the kinda guy I would of loved to work for at Microsoft. Shame I will never have that chance, atleast for now.
    Still a bit of school to finish ;)

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