Mad Jobs called Ballmer over Bungie sale

Former Xbox exec Ed Fries has told Develop that Apple head Steve Jobs made a personal, angry phone call to Microsoft chief Steve Ballmer after Bungie sold out to the Windows firm in 2000.

“As soon as we announced we bought Bungie, Steve Jobs called,” Fries said.

“He was mad at [Microsoft CEO Steve] Ballmer and phoned him up and was angry because we’d just bought the premier Mac game developer and made them an Xbox developer.”

Fries was ordered to placate Jobs over the issue.

“So, during the day, I got an email from Steve Ballmer asking me to phone Steve Jobs and calm him down about the whole thing,” he said.

“Anyway, we did this deal with Apple where we’d port some PC games to the Macintosh and help Peter Tamte create this company to do it, and I had to go to a Mac developer conference and get on stage and talk about this whole new partnership. It was a pretty strange time.”

Mental. More through the link.