We just spoke via phone with Microsoft corporate vice president Peter Moore, who runs the Xbox division. He called to let us know that Don Mattrick, formerly in charge of Electronic Arts' massive studio operation, has joined Microsoft as an external adviser for its Entertainment and Devices division. Moore first praised Mattrick, who joined us one the phone, as one of the industry's most prominent people, and likened his coming aboard to a baseball superstar joining the Yankees (no A-Rod jokes, please.) Apparently, Moore and Mattrick had been in talks ever since he left EA, exploring a number of opportunities for the two to work together, and this is the arrangement that they came up with.

We asked Mattrick whether he was surrendering his Canadian passport. He chuckled and said, no, that he'd be mostly working from his home in Vancouver, but that he'd be commuting to Redmond, Washington as necessary. He also downplayed talk of his political ambitions north of the border. As for the timing of today's news, he told us that it had nothing to do with a non-compete agreement with EA, because his obligations to them ended in February of 2006. Rather, he'd taken the year off to focus on family, friends and fitness, and was now excited to rejoin the industry. Referring to The Godfather game from his old company, we asked Mattrick whether it would be accurate to say that he'll be serving as Microsoft's consiglieri, he laughed and said that he hadn't thought about it in those terms.

Moore denied that any beef had needed to be smoothed out between the two men stemming from EA's refusal to support the Dreamcast, the EA Sports-Sega Sports rivalry (during Moore's days as head of Sega of America), or EA's initial refusal to put its games on Xbox Live. Those long-ago tensions, he said, had always been more between himself and EA CEO Larry Probst, with dueling publicists Jeff Brown (EA) and Charlie Bellfield (Sega) fanning the flames in the media like a Hogwarts Wizards' Duel.

Both Mattrick and Moore were vague about what precisely his new duties would entail. Mattrick expressed excitement about the Microsoft's resources and scope--specifically citing its wide-ranging work on PC games, consoles, devices, accessories, music and other forms of entertainment--but was most enthused about the further development of concepts, properties and services around Xbox Live. Moore stressed that Mattrick would be working with the entire Entertainment and Devices division, including James "J" Allard's Zune music player group. (We'll have more on our brief exchange about Allard in a subsequent post.)

As we were winding down, Mattrick asked us what we thought was the most important trend in games. We agreed that online was the most intriguing, but just as many developers and publishers had learned the wrong lessons--as well as painful lessons--from Grand Theft Auto III--it would be a mistake for game creators and console rivals to simply try to rip off success stories like World of Warcraft Xbox Live. He said that our instincts were right, and that his goal was to see Microsoft do it better than anyone else. And with that, our phone call with the two captains of industry came to a close.