John Riccitiello steps down as CEO of Unity
I have to say, the only thing more surprising to me than seeing the board actually hold Riccitiello responsible for this (with consequences) is seeing that their interim replacement / transitional CEO is someone with a pedigree that, on the surface, seems even more management consulting / investor / revenue focused than Riccitiello was himself.<p>To be clear, I know essentially nothing about James M. Whitehurst other than what is readily publicly available (IBM / Red Hat, advisory roles, etc.).<p>But my read on a lot of the Unity crisis, as a long-time game industry veteran myself, was that one of the increasingly common "management consulting" / investor- & revenue-focused type of gaming executives (e.g. Riccitiello, Don Mattrick [Zynga replacement CEO when Pincus stepped down], Kotick [Activision-Blizzard]) had finally overstepped their bounds and let revenue goals drive decision-making just a bit too far without customer consideration.<p>So, I had assumed that if Unity did make a leadership change here, it would be in a direction away from that - i.e. a more industry-seasoned executive with less of a pure revenue / "business" focus.<p>I think I clearly misjudged the situation here in light the Whitehurst pick; while it's possible that is truly just an interim role and they will still pivot to this in the final hire, or that I simply misjudge "the label on the tin" and Whitehurst is very culture / customer focused, I don't think I would bet on it.  This seems like the board actually "doubling down" on driving revenue results - and fast.