While on the surface it is very easy to understand the Balmer hate because he comes off as loud, slow, annoying, and uninformed. And yet he has been in charge of MS for quite a while now, and has not only managed to not sink the ship, but actually grow it.
So while my initial reaction to balmer being placed in charge makes me think that XB1 will now just be Halo and sports games, I have to step back and realize that while I do not like him, he has made some great decisions in other departments so this may not be so bad.
I still dobut that we will see cross-platform capabilities between XB1 and Win8 PCs like we should this generation... but who knows. Maybe something good will happen.