GameDaily's 'Persons of the Year': #4 Greenberg and #5 Gerstmann
by Alexander Sliwinski 
{ Dec 13th 2007 at 2:00PM }
GameDaily is counting down who it believes are 2007's industry "Persons of the Year," and the site started things off with a bang yesterday picking Gamespot's former editorial director Jeff Gerstmann. Today GameDaily did a much softer pick with Xbox Live's Aaron Greenberg. As group product manager for Xbox Live, Greenberg has been the point man in what every console should strive for in its online experience.Unlike a lot of the Microsoft execs, Greenberg has actually been with the Xbox for the last seven years. As GameDaily points out, the success of Xbox Live probably rests quite strongly in that the Xbox 360 seems to have been designed around the service which Greenberg heads.
GameDaily also has a Reader's Choice award, so check it out if there's someone in the industry who you think should be nominated.
Read -- #5 Jeff Gerstmann.
Read -- #4 Aaron Greenberg.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
hvnlysoldr @ Dec 13th 2007 2:13PM
Good for him?
Rob Accomando @ Dec 13th 2007 2:19PM
Person of the year for writing a negative review about a game and getting fired? Ooook.
Akamaru @ Dec 13th 2007 2:22PM
I agree with you. All of a sudden he is a hero because he was doing his job?
tmacairjordan87 @ Dec 13th 2007 2:33PM
you guys fail to see the point. Yes he did his job and was fired, but the fact that he refused to cave into advertiser pressure and alter his review for them is why he was fired. He was basically sacrificed for sticking up for the integrity of game journalists and to surface the problem of advertiser pressure and in some cases the company giving into them
gonk @ Dec 13th 2007 8:39PM
what limpdicks voted tmjordan down? eidos employees?
Korova @ Dec 13th 2007 2:26PM
XBL is awesome. Good for AG!
Joe Smith @ Dec 13th 2007 2:31PM
Um. Aaron isn't an exec and he doesn't head up Live. Greeberg is the PR Manager for Xbox. He is one of lots and lots of people on the Xbox team who have been there for 7+ years -- none of whom you've heard of. Ultimatley, Executives are pretty meaningless, as are spokespeople. It's the guys and women doing the day to day work that actually matter.
Bonafide247 @ Dec 13th 2007 2:45PM
Joe, I'm sorry, but that's just a stupid comment. You give no supporting evidence to back up your point of "executives being useless". Give us detailed examples.
Grog @ Dec 13th 2007 2:45PM
It should be interesting to see who #1-3 are. I have to imagine at least one of those slots goes to a Nintendo guy, but do the others go to hardware or software people?
Gangsta Smurf @ Dec 13th 2007 2:58PM
LOL what a sucky year we've had.
brandon_r87 @ Dec 13th 2007 3:05PM
What? How can you say that? All systems had great games this year. For Wii there was Super Mario Galaxy and Metroid Prime 3. Xbox 360 had Halo 3. There were also great multiplatform games like Bioshock, The Orange Box, Guitar Hero III, Rock Band. Sorry, I don't really know the PS3 stuff since I don't have one, but I know its library is getting better. Handhelds had a good year too. This has been one of the best years for gaming in recent memory for me.
Gangsta Smurf @ Dec 13th 2007 3:09PM
Definitely not game wise, I mean as far as who's 'persons of the year'.
Weak sauce +1
why not the LS2/LS7? @ Dec 13th 2007 4:10PM
Gerstmann? What did he do exactly? He got fired. His name may be involved, but the actions that made this a story were not his.
Greenberg maybe. If he's the one who just made the call to degrade the Silver experience, then I have to take exception. If you want to sell Gold, make Gold better, don't make Silver worse.
EihBeir @ Dec 13th 2007 4:49PM
Gerstmann warrants this...why? All he did was get fired.
Just because CNet and GameSpot rank high on the "Morons of the Year" list doesn't mean Gerstmann deserves the opposite accolades.
Joe Smith @ Dec 13th 2007 7:13PM
Bonafied 247 -- I didn't say useless, I said meaningless. As doorstops and figureheads, many of them have utility.
My main point was 1) that Aaron is not an exec, he is a PR guy who's job is mostly makign nice with the press, and 2) that for every exec on a list like this there are thousands of people doing teh real work of geting products out to customers -- and they get little to no recognition.