John Riccitiello had taken a run at me before I went to Microsoft, and the night before I said yes to Robbie, John Riccitiello and the head of HR at that time had hauled me out for dinner to try to convince me to say no to Microsoft and to join EA – it was too late as I'd made a commitment to Robbie. Then Riccitiello came back and introduced the new label structure – I wouldn't have come to EA in the previous structure, it would make no sense.
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It was unfortunate because as this was going on the Red Ring of Death story broke and so for better or worse the belief was that I'd been pushed out because of the hardware problems – that was not the case at all. But it was unfortunate timing. And then… I said yes in mid-June and still had E3 to get through, and in fairness to Microsoft I was already an EA employee while on stage with Rockband as head of Xbox – I wasn't an official EA employee, but I'd said yes to EA.

The reason I blog is that I think our brand needs more of a conversation with its consumers. I think over the years we haven't evolved the brand – you know 'It's in the game' barked at you buy an American voice - it makes us who we are, but who we are has to evolve.