The two leading lights of Microsoft’s Entertainment and Devices division — Robbie Bach and J Allard — are leaving the company, possibly leaving chief executive Steve Ballmer in direct charge of all the company’s fun and games

Robbie Bach is retiring as president of Microsoft’s Entertainment and Devices division, while J Allard is to become a consultant on specific projects. Bach and J Allard are the people mainly responsible for the Xbox games console and Live service, the Zune media player, PC gaming, Microsoft TV, Microsoft Surface, Office for Mac, and Windows Mobile and Windows Phone 7 phones.In the latest financial quarter, the E&D division made an operating profit of $165m on sales worth $1.7bn. The company made $5.2bn on a turnover of $14.5bn.

Bach joined Microsoft in 1988 and often appeared in keynote speeches with Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer, who said in a statement: “Robbie’s an amazing business person and close personal friend, which makes his departure a point of sadness for me.” Some had considered Bach a possible future CEO.

Allard, the division’s senior vice president of design and development, is leaving after 19 years at Microsoft. Allard is considered the “father of the Xbox” and his disappearance was noted on 18 May by ZD Net’s Mary Jo Foley, who wrote Where in the world is J Allard? A source told her that “Allard is on sabbatical and is unlikely to return to Microsoft”. However, Allard told TechFlash that his departure was not connected with the cancellation of another of his projects, the dual-screen Courier tablet computer. He said he wanted to devote more time to his personal interests, particularly adventure sports.

Allard was widely admired and the Kotaku games blog has posted a tribute, J Allard, We Will Miss You

Bach is not being replaced, so the mobile phone and Xbox bosses, Andy Lees and Don Mattrick, will report directly to Ballmer. Allard will also report directly to Ballmer on his special projects.

Whatever the reasons for the reorganisation, the division has not generally been successful at selling its major products, or at making money out of them. While Microsoft has done far better than most people expected in establishing the Xbox console line, the Xbox 360 has been dogged by problems with consoles overheating and failing with the famous Red Ring of Death. Microsoft extended the product’s guarantee to cover the issue, taking a $1bn charge for the cost. The division’s successes include the Xbox Live online service and the Halo games franchise.

While Microsoft was relatively quick to enter the smartphone market with touch-screen systems, long before Apple, its Windows Mobile software was clunky by comparison. It has lost market share both to Apple’s iPhone and to systems running Google’s Android software. And while the Zune HD and Zune 4 desktop software have impressed users, the system has not sold well in the US, and has not been launched internationally. It remains to be seen whether the impressive-looking Windows Phone 7 will do any better.

Microsoft has been extremely successful as a platform company, providing software that other companies could use to build their own products, including PCs and phones, applications and both online and offline services. The Entertainment and Devices division embodied Microsoft’s attempt to create proprietary vertically integrated systems including its own hardware, operating system, applications, content and online services. It’s a strategy that Apple has used with tremendous success, but Microsoft has never been able to match it.

Even those who weren’t particularly keen on Bach could struggle to see Ballmer doing the job any better himself. However, since Bach isn’t retiring until the autumn, there’s still time to find a successor.

Microsoft

Xbox

Jack Schofield

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Pac-Man’s 30th anniversary is celebrated with a playable Google doodle – the first of its kind

Google has become famous for changing its logo for special events, but it has never converted it into a playable game before. Today, it is celebrating the 30th anniversary of Pac-Man’s launch in Japan with a version that lets you steer your pizza-shaped protagonist* around a maze that spells out Google’s name – at least for as long as you can evade the ghosts Inky, Blinky, Pinky and Clyde

To play, simply click the button that usually says “I’m feeling lucky” but now has the legend “Insert Coin”. However, if you don’t do anything, the game will start by itself.

If you click twice on “Insert Coin” then two people can play. Ms Pac-Man joins the game, with the second person controlling her movements using the WASD keys.

Marcin Wichary, Google programmer and senior user interface designer, says: “When I was growing up, my dad had the best job I could possibly imagine: he was an arcade game and pinball technician. For me, that meant summer trips through Poland’s coastal cities with their seasonal arcade parlors; peeking inside cabinets to learn programming and engineering secrets; and – of course – free games!”

Although Tōru Iwatani’s Pac-Man and Ms Pac-Man are now free “casual” games, they were state-of-the-art in the early 1980s, and they harvested billions of dollars in loose change. The games soon appeared on home computers, too, though a Pac-Man cartridge for an Atari 800 cost more than £30.

Ms Pac-Man was also one of the first video games to attract a female following at a time when most players were (at least reputedly) spotty boys.

Wichary says Pac-Man “seems like a natural fit for the Google homepage. They’re both deceptively straightforward, carefully hiding their complexity under the hood. There’s a light-hearted, human touch to both of them. And we can only hope you find using Google at least a quarter as enjoyable as eating dots and chasing ghosts. You know, without actually needing any quarters.”

Incidentally, Google is not alone in celebrating Pac-Man’s birthday. The Museum of Computing in Swindon is marking the milestone on Saturday when “a specially constructed maze in Swindon Town centre’s Wharf Green will be the venue for a unique ‘Human Pac-Man’ event.” Visitors to the museum will also be able to play the game on various retro machines, without the need to stock up on 50p pieces.

Charles Arthur adds: interestingly, as Apple, Google and Adobe war with each other over the importance of Adobe’s Flash system, the doodle is written entirely in HTML, CSS and Javascript – Flash isn’t required. That means it works on iPhones too…** Although the sound is in Flash – so that doesn’t work on the iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad. (To move, swipe the way you want to go.) This, as a Guardian colleague points out, is the first time that Flash has made it onto the front page of Google…

* Pac-Man was based on the Japanese character for ‘mouth’.

Games

Google

Google doodle

Jack Schofield

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