GOONL!NE

Don Mattrick.

What a guy apparently. Cool, calm and like a cuecumber…but also cocky and the biggest loudmouth ever? Since he took over Peter Moore’s job last year as Head of Xbox, he’s kept a low spotlight (Giving John Schepart the GDC keynote) until E3 when he made his first public appearence since taking the job last August.

He boldly claimed that the Xbox 360 will at least beat the PLAYSTATION 3 this generation (Despite the fact the PS3 has overtaken the Xbox 360 in Europe and that since the start of the year, the PS3 has been outselling the 360 in America), took part in a very bad live demo of the very bad “You’re in the Movies” and of course, he was as cocky as you like, giving two thumbs up on stage when Yuichi Wada of Square Enix came out to unveil Final Fantasy XIII for the Xbox 360 (As seen )

But today, in a interview published by Eurogamer, Mattrick states that the 360 will still sellout the PS3 this gen. He also claims that when they cut the new Halo game out of the MS E3 Press Conference, Head of Bungie, Harold Ryan, was laughing.

Hit the jump to hear more of our good friend, Don Mattrick.

On the subject of Halo:

The first cut of our show we had lined up all the things that were ready to go and ready to speak to people about and it was a two-and-a-half-hour show at the same pace that we did. So in prior experience sitting in the office, I kind of had a general rule of thumb which I shared with the team that I didn’t think we should go over 90 minutes.

We need to be respectful of the audience that if we were delivering and showing things – and by delivering and showing things here’s what I mean: showing real software and talking about ship-dates, a pretty novel concept right? People playing and us telling them when it’s going to ship, centring it on things that are coming in 2008, another novel concept. When we put all those things together and showed all the things that we did, we did our first run, we had over two and a half hours of stuff, so then the question is: do you hold everyone captive for two and a half hours and run through it, or do you park some things?

One of the things that we decided, when you have the number one game in the world as we have in Halo, it’s a safe prediction that if we do a separate event for Halo, that it’ll be well-attended, well covered and allow people to get hands-on experience of using the products, and that we can generate a tremendous amount of press with that, so we didn’t feel we needed to show Halo to have a great show, to pay homage to our core audience, to have a lot of news, so it was an embarrassment of riches and we couldn’t fit it in. How great is that? I think that’s awesome.

On Bungie’s Laughing Matter:

Sure they’re disappointed. Any software creator would be disappointed. Harold just laughed and he said, “Boy, just a sign of growth inside the business, we agree,” and I actually think too, again, we just have so much news with playable software, with dates, with things for people to touch and interact, we probably had too much stuff. We’ve had more than a year of productivity since the last E3.

At one point, he even attempted to put words into the mouth of the interviewer, Eurogamer Editor Tom Bramwell, on who won out of the E3 Press Conferences.

On E3 Press Conference’s:

Mattrick: Yeah! [Shouting] Yeah! How good is that? No come on, let me put you on the spot: who won? Who won? Who did the best show?

Bramwell: At E3?

Mattrick: Who won at E3?

Bramwell: Er, your press conference was more impressive than the other two.

Mattrick: Let’s just get that in print, because that’s what I want to see, alright? So we got the thumbs up, Eurogamer said, “Microsoft had the best conference, we delivered the most news, we showed real stuff”–

Bramwell: Well you’re putting words in my mouth now, but I did say that you had the best press conference.

But…it seems that another shitstorm has kicked off…at Bungie. It seems that Studio head of Bungie, Harold Ryan, has stated that he wasn’t laughing when he was told the new Halo game was cut insisting it wasnt no laughing matter.

Keeping things clean, I certainly didn’t agree with the decision to delay our news until sometime after E3.

Bungie is always concerned first and foremost with our fans. Whenever we are prevented from exceeding their positive expectations it is not a laughing matter.

So…Mattrick attempts to put words into Eurogamer’s mouth, cuts the new Halo out of the conference, reveals the existence of the said new Halo (Shown here), says that Bungie were Okay with it being cut from the conference when indeed they werent…does anybody smell something going on inside Microsoft and Bungie?

Microsoft’s Don Mattrick [Eurogamer]
Bungie president “certainly didn’t agree” with decision to postpone Halo E3 reveal [Eurogamer]