Newsweek had a phonecall with chieftain Peetah Moore over at Microsoft’s Xbox division, and uncovered that Don Mattrick, formerly president of Electronic Arts’ worldwide game development studios, is joining the Redmont Giant’s ranks.

It turns out the two big wigs have had regular correspondence since Mattrick left EA late 2005, allegedly because he lost interest in leading a public company. It took well over a year for them to work out what they both wanted, but the end result is now that Mattrick will be an external advisor for the Entertainment and Devices division. Although Mattrick lives in Vancouver, Canada, he will commute to Redmond just across the border to fulfill his duties when he can’t work from home.

Moore and the Don also downplayed that there would be any historic corporate tensions between the two of them:

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.

Currently it’s not exactly clear what Mattrick will be doing in his new position, but we at Xboxic hope that he’s not going to be giving too much advise based on his EA past. Yes Don, if you are reading this: less worthless microtransactions, better tailoring of games for their specific platforms, and less pressure and deadlines for game developers. Got that?