Today, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer sent out an E-mail that detailed a new restructuring plan. The company will be divided into eight branches Engineering, Marketing, Business Development and Evangelism, Advanced Strategy and Research, Finance, HR, Legal, and Operations. Engineering itself will then be broken down into further subdivisions, Operating Systems, Applications and Services, Cloud and Enterprise, and Devices and Studios.
This move splits up development for the upcoming Xbox One into several different units. Terry Myerson, known for his work on the Windows Phone, will be heading up the Operating System unit, which will be handling the Xbox One’s firmware, core apps, and other Microsoft produced core programs. Julie Larson-Green will be stepping in for Don Mattrick as head of Devices and Studios, which will be in charge of the Xbox One’s physical components such as the processor, hard drive, graphics card, and the like.
While Balmer’s e-mail stresses “Improving our performance has three big dimensions: focusing the whole company on a single strategy, improving our capability in all disciplines and engineering/technology areas, and working together with more collaboration and agility around our common goals,” one has to wonder whether splitting Xbox One development up into different groups is actually the best way to go about developing it. Balmer also talked about reshaping how Microsoft interacts with their consumers, which might be a response to how gamers reacted to the Xbox One’s original DRM plans.
We will bring you more information on the restructuring of Microsoft and the release of the Xbox One as it becomes available.
Source: GameInformer