President · Electronic Arts / Microsoft Xbox · b. 1963 · 1991–2013
Don Mattrick led Electronic Arts through its most commercially dominant decade as president of worldwide studios, then ran Microsoft's Xbox division and presided over both the Xbox 360's market success and the Xbox One's disastrous launch reveal.
Mattrick co-founded Distinctive Software in Vancouver at the age of seventeen, building it into the studio responsible for the Test Drive and Earl Weaver Baseball series before Electronic Arts acquired it in 1991. He rose through EA's ranks to become president of EA Worldwide Studios in 1997, overseeing the company's most successful commercial period: annual Madden and FIFA updates, The Sims (2000) — which became the best-selling PC game of all time — and the Command & Conquer, Need for Speed, and Battlefield franchises. Under his supervision, EA became the world's largest third-party publisher by revenue. Mattrick left EA in 2007 to become senior vice president of the Interactive Entertainment Business at Microsoft, overseeing the Xbox division. He led the Xbox 360 through its peak commercial years, including the launch of Kinect in 2010, which sold eight million units in its first sixty days — the fastest-selling consumer electronics device in history at the time according to Guinness. His tenure ended badly: the May 2013 Xbox One reveal, conducted under his leadership, was widely considered a catastrophic communications failure. The announcement focused on television integration and always-online requirements that alienated the console's core gaming audience and ceded enormous goodwill to Sony's simultaneously positioning PlayStation 4. Mattrick left Microsoft in July 2013, weeks before the Xbox One's November launch, and became CEO of Zynga.