The DeanBeat: In games, rebooting a big dream isn’t easy

We saw some ambitious dreams in gaming fall apart in the past week. Sony bought OnLive’s patents and the cloud gaming pioneer said it would shutter its doors. And former Microsoft Xbox chief Don Mattrick resigned from Zynga, where he had planned to turn around the social gaming leader that brought us FarmVille but stumbled when it moved into mobile. His turnaround was unfinished.

Both of those outcomes were the latest chapters in attempts to reboot a big dream that had gone off the rails. They show that correcting a company’s course is a difficult thing to do once it has gone astray. Having talked to some of the principal parties in these dramas over the years, I’ve tried to find some lessons. In both cases, two companies failed, and then had a replacement CEO come in and try to make good on the company’s initial promise. The results are enlightening.