Post by ΨBarnacleBrainBrantΨ on May 2, 2007 16:22:10 GMT 6
A year ago, we interviewed Xbox bossman Peter Moore shortly after the 360's launch. Most of you liked our line of questioning—brutal, honest, and frankly, a little smart-assy. Xbox loyalists, however, thought we were being rude and said we needed to apologize to Moore. Yeah, right.
Don't worry, Xbox fans...Moore actually enjoys tackling the tough issues—he told us so himself. So we decided to do a one-year follow-up with the guy, and we threw in a few questions direct from our readers on EGMboards.1UP.com to force Moore to address his customers directly. We also ask him some of the same big-picture questions that we posed last month to Jack Tretton, Sony Computer Entertainment America's president and CEO, so you can compare the two's responses....
EGM: Last year we asked you about the successor to the Xbox 360, and you told us, "The platform development team is taking a welldeserved break, and they should come back in a year refreshed, looking for the next challenge." OK, it's been a year. What are those guys working on now?
Peter Moore: As with any platform group, they're always looking ahead once they deliver a system. They start looking at scenarios, four, six years from now—where will we be, what will the consumer be looking for, what will be the capabilities of silicon [chips] in 2011, 2012, whenever it is that the next next generation starts. These things take years to develop; you have to work with partners to be able to build the necessary infrastructure to make sure the next-generation console is truly a next-generation console. We're going to be ready for the next generation if and when it arrives.
Elite 360
EGM: A year ago you said the number of defective Xbox 360s was small, "no different from any other major consumer electronics product," but late in 2006 your company admitted that there was a higher than usual number of units coming in for repair. What happened?
PM: That comment was specifically referring to the early manufacturing in '05 and wasn't referring to all consoles manufactured. We took care of that through some warranty measures—we have increased our warranty to 12 months. We're trying to do right by the consumer.
EGM: We talked about how the 360 is a really loud machine, but it's even more apparent now next to the relatively quiet PS3 and Wii.
PM: I keep a very close eye on what consumers are saying. I really don't see that as being a major issue. Would we like to be able to have a quieter machine? I guess so. Is it feasibly possible? You're probably asking the wrong guy to start talking about technology for cooling fans.
EGM: We gave you a hard time about the 360 not being backward compatible with the entire Xbox 1 library. Now the Wii is out, and it can play GameCube discs, going as far as to offer ports for GameCube controllers. And the PlayStation 3, although it's not perfect at it, certainly supports a far greater percentage of past-generation titles than the 360 does (at least in the U.S.). Both these systems even let you transfer old save files. Is this just an area that you don't care to compete in?
PM: If you look back at when the issue of backward compatibility came up, I don't think anybody really felt we'd get to where we are today. We recently had another update that pushed us to over 300 games. It is something that is not easy to do, and you and I talked about this ad nauseum over the past couple of years, but we continue to work on it. We'll continue to add games to that list.
EGM: Why are we still getting voice-chat problems? It seems like nobody at Microsoft is able to give us a straight answer about this. There used to be echoes...now there are players who just can't hear each other. It's especially frustrating considering that the service costs $50 a year.
PM: Why are you still getting voicechat problems? [Laughs] I know you spoke with [Group Product Marketing Manager for Xbox Live Global] Aaron Greenberg, and we're actually going to try and come down and fix that onsite with you. It's pretty complex when we're connecting millions of people and 20-odd countries around the world with so many different protocols and broadband partners—every now and again you'll get some glitches. If this is something that is broader than more than a handful of people, my apologies, and we'll do everything we can to be able to fix it.
EGM: Are you saying that you and Aaron are going to come over to my house to fix my voice chat?
PM: [Laughs] I didn't say "Aaron and I," but I did say "we" meaning the broader Microsoft "we." Somebody will come to your house, yes. I want you to print this. Somebody will come to your house, diagnose the problem, and fix it...once we replicate it.
EGM: While we're giving you a hard time about stuff, to be fair, last year we complained that many of the 360 games looked only marginally better than their current-gen equivalents. But now that we've seen Gears of War, we're believers. But we're still not sure about that whole "games feeling like a lucid dream" thing that you were pitching....
Gears of War
PM: You know, it's funny. My son was home from [UC] Berkeley.... The Xbox 360 is on the big screen—I got a DLP projector—and let me tell you, you get involved in some of those late-night games on Xbox Live in Gears of War, and you are exhausted. I don't know if it's a lucid dream, but boy, you are transported to a different world. You're ducking and popping and shooting and watching your team's back...it transports you to what we used to talk about in my old PE-teacher days: the right side of the brain, where you move over into a different world. All of a sudden you're away from that left side of the brain—analytical thinking—and you're at war. It's intense and it's immersive, so yeah, one of these days something is going to come along where people will say it felt like a lucid dream. I dunno. [Laughs] You're going to hammer me on that every year, so I may as well just come up with a good story for it.
EGM: Another thing we have to give to you: Originally we thought the concept of Achievements was rather silly, but most of us are hooked now.
PM: Yeah, I watch all of you guys on your blogs. You're all hooked. You're chasing the most obscure Achievements I've ever seen. Things I never knew existed. I think it's human nature to want to achieve something, and then more importantly, let the rest of the world know you've achieved it.
EGM: You told us that Rare is very important to the future of the Xbox 360 platform. We love Viva Piñata, but it was a sales disappointment. Kameo and Perfect Dark Zero were relatively disappointing. So what else do you have? Is it all up to Banjo-Kazooie now?
Xbox Live
PM: Well, let's talk about Viva Piñata. You say it's a sales disappointment. Our long-term plan for Viva Piñata is not a typical videogame cycle of, "Let's look at the first four weeks and then make a determination whether it's been a success or failure after that." The people who play it, including your boss [editorial director John Davison], love it. And we also see a longer tail in Viva Piñata than we're seeing in other games—it continues to truck along nicely. It's a very important title that will broaden as we continue to reach out into a broader demographic of consumers. So don't write off Viva Piñata as anything but a success yet, because I think it does a lot of things for the platform that other games aren't doing for it.
Rare continues to be very important. Banjo will be along soon, and while you and I have gone back and forth on Kameo, I still think that was an important title at launch for us. It's easy to look at sales and dismiss it, but it's the more subjective opinion of having titles that were available at launch that you would never expect at launch. Viva Piñata will do the same thing this past holiday, and Banjo will do the same thing when it's available. Rare is still very, very important.
EGM: Whatever happened to community-driven microtransactions? You originally envisioned part of Xbox Live Marketplace being run by the community, where you could buy and download content designed by other gamers.
PM: I think that XNA Game Studio Express is the first step there. People are loving this idea of being able to build their own Xbox 360 games. And I think that's the first stepping stone to [other types of] user-created content. Those microtransactions are still in our plans. There's a lot of complexity involved with that...allowing consumers to interact with each other...but we're committed to [being] able to do that in the future.
EGM: In regard to offering HD-DVD as an optional add-on, you said in the past, "We're not forcing movie technology on game players, but instead are letting them choose how to personalize their experiences." If that's true, why not sell a Blu-ray player as well?
PM: Well, because...when we look at HD-DVD, we're looking at a superior format. Microsoft is a backer of HDDVD for a number of reasons, and I don't see any reason why we should support something that we don't believe in. We believe in HD-DVD.
EGM: Why not give the consumer the choice, though?
PM: Because the consumer's choosing HD-DVD. [Laughs all around] Look...we're not going to get embroiled in a movie-playback war. We're very clear on this. If you've already got your 360, $199 puts you in the high-def movie playback scenario, but I'm not burdening the box with it as our competitor's done. This is about games. It's not about movies.
EGM: Does that mean you wouldn't include a built-in HD-DVD player in future iterations of the Xbox 360?
PM: No, no, it's about choice. We're absolutely focused on consumers that want to play games, and if they're fortunate enough to be the small minority right now that have the equipment to take advantage of the new generation of high-definition movie playback, then at their choice they can buy an HD-DVD player for $199.
EGM: Why are we paying for Xbox Live Gold if Sony can offer PlayStation Network for free?
Xbox Live
PM: Well, it's interesting...we're now 5 million-plus members strong. When we look at the experience that $50 a year is giving people, in relation to the experience that I have certainly seen with the PS3 online network, I don't think there's a comparison yet.
People say the value for their money is the experience of having single gamertags and identities, voice chat in all games...you talk about Achievements...to be able to see achievements in your gamer profile, know who your friends are, have this consistent quality of experience across all games.... It's something that we do and do very, very well. We're now into our fifth year of building this thing out...I haven't found anybody that complains about paying $50 a year for the Xbox Live Gold subscription. Haven't found anybody at all.
EGM: Isn't there a way to kick the foul-mouthed, 12-year-old racist homophobes off of Xbox Live a little bit more quickly?
PM: [Laughs] Well, you know, we have millions of people now that can be on Live, and it's not easy. We do our utmost to govern. There's a lot of selfgoverning going on as well that we appreciate—the community reporting people who are exactly what you talk about: foul-mouthed, racist, homophobic...and we do everything we can to quickly react to the complaints.
But I apologize to anybody that's offended by [inappropriate behavior], particularly if they're going into games that are not Mature-rated and are hearing things. I would just encourage the community to self-police.
EGM: What's the point of purchasing a core Xbox 360 to save $100 if you have to buy—
PM: To save $100!
EGM: But you have to pay $40 to get a memory card to make up for the lack of a hard drive.
PM: So you're saving $60.
EGM: But these memory cards aren't even big enough for the upcoming content you have on Xbox Live Marketplace....
PM: We need to offer choice to the consumers, and not everybody wants a hard drive—a memory unit is just fine for their purposes. Look, we would love for everybody to have a hard drive, and we would love for everybody to connect their box to broadband, but we also recognize that the majority of people outside the United States don't have access to broadband right now, although that's quickly changing. We're trying to offer the choice.
EGM: The certification process for Xbox Live Arcade games has taken a robust opportunity that Microsoft had to innovate in the space and clogged things up. We hear a lot of horror stories from developers with games in certification limbo, and it seems like Nintendo is capitalizing by shoveling out up to four titles per week on the Wii's Virtual Console. Do you feel like this might be a missed opportunity for you?
PM: No. You use the term "shoveling out," and that's what we're trying to avoid. Arcade needs to be something that's managed very closely from a quality point of view. There's a cost involved in this, and what we don't want to do is "shovel" things out and make the experience that little bit more diluted. I think the publishers and the developers are all getting used to our quality standards now, and we've certainly got no shortage of concepts that are coming in.
But don't expect us to shovel anything out. Not having to sit through bad games to buy good games is something we're all about.
EGM: With the continued success of the PlayStation 2, why has Microsoft left the Xbox 1 to wither away? Why abandon the potential cash flow with a wider audience?
PM: Well, we have tried to give consumers enough notice on what our intentions are. The PlayStation 2 continues to do well, as you say, and my plaudits go out to Sony on that, but we've moved forward. The Xbox 1 continues to be something that our third-party partners develop and publish games for. But we have determined that we need to move on to the next gen, and the Xbox 360 is our focus.
EGM: What would have to happen at the end of this current Xbox 360 cycle for you to want to support it longer and more heavily than you did Xbox 1?
PM: While we're talking hypothetically about, I don't know, four to six years from now, our plans are to continue to support the Xbox 360 for as many years as consumers want to buy it. I think that first-party plays a large role in that. When you think of Halo, Gears of War, Fable, Forza, and Project Gotham, to name just a few, you now have franchises that we can continue to extend longer and deeper into the lifecycle than we [were able to] in the first generation. [On Xbox 1] you could have said there was Halo and not much else, for better or for worse. We've continued to build on a five- to 10-year plan with first party that you're now starting to see the benefits of.
Halo
EGM: Now that it's out, how do you view the Wii?
PM: The same way when I first saw it last year: It's a very innovative device. It's done incredibly well at the holiday period and retailers seem to be very happy. The question that remains is, how long will the experience be innovative to consumers, and what are the legs of this thing? Is it a real next-gen contender that can continue deep into the lifecycle, that can continue to meet the numbers?
EGM: Do you have one yourself?
PM: I don't. I was hoping my friend Reggie [Fils-Aime, Nintendo's president and COO] would send me one, but there's plenty around here that I get to play with. My house is an Xbox 360 house. And a Games for Windows house, I might add.
EGM: How do you view the PlayStation 3?
PM: Sony clearly had a shaky start, and I think even they will admit that. I'm a little disturbed from an industry point of view to actually see them available at retail just recently...still sitting on the shelf. I don't know what that's telling me. I certainly think Resistance has done a good job for them, but the games that come to mind trail off pretty quickly after that.
EGM: Some analysts are predicting that the PlayStation 3 will end up the market leader in a few years despite its stumble out of the gates. Why do you think that is?
PM: I don't know what the analysts would [look at] right now—vis-á-vis the price point, the quality of the games, the number of units they're shipping, their supply chain scheduling on a global basis—that would indicate the PS3 is going to beat the Wii or the Xbox 360. The facts don't bear that out right now. Maybe the historical strength of the PlayStation brand is something that they're looking at, to say, "Well, it's happened twice, therefore it must happen a third time." Maybe they think that Blu-ray is going to be the de facto high-def movie playback format this year, and that consumers will be clamoring to pay extra money to get a Blu-ray player as part of the PlayStation 3 experience. I don't know. I guess you'd have to ask them.
EGM: Sony's seeing a few former exclusives head to the Xbox 360 as well, such as Grand Theft Auto 4 and Virtua Fighter 5. This is good news for you, but it seems to make the two platforms feel...a little bit more homogenized. So besides a few first-party games, what defines your platform?
PM: I think you absolutely downplay the importance of first-party. There's not going to be the equivalent of a Grand Theft Auto like there was in the previous generation—a third-party exclusive that will determine winners and losers in this next generation. It will be the power of the franchises that first-party develops and delivers on a regular basis. That's where we feel really good about where we stand in this next generation.
And of course, having some key third-party exclusive games is very important. I'll point to Lost Planet...on the heels of what we did with Dead Rising. I'll point to BioShock. I'll point to Splinter Cell 5. So when you combine what I think is a very strong portfolio from a first-party point of view, and then you add some key exclusives from third party, and then having Xbox Live as a very powerful layer all over that...that's why we feel real good about what we can offer to the consumer.
Bio Shock
EGM: What is the deal with Halo 3? There's no other game out there that could get away with putting out updates on just a gun or something minor like that....
PM: I just think it recognizes the voracity and the passion around Halo nation, that we can update a weapon, update a vehicle, or add a character, and volumes...tomes are written about it. People look at it like a conspiracy theory, and people break down frame by frame anything that we send them. It's in recognition of the power of this franchise around the world that any morsel of information that we provide is voraciously gobbled up.
EGM: If there's one game or franchise you could steal away from the competition, what would it be?
PM: You know, I've always been a huge fan of Nintendo intellectual property from the early days of owning a Super NES, and when I think of franchises that have defined our industry, there's probably none bigger for me than Mario. I'm sure the headline will be "MOORE WANTS MARIO ON XBOX 360," but when you think of our industry over the past 25 years, and you think of the one character that would define what videogaming is about, it's that little Italian plumber.
EGM: When will ad-supported games actually change the economics of games for gamers? Will you be passing along the savings to consumers, or do you think it will ultimately let you afford more ambitious projects?
PM: There are numerous ways now that we can continue to bolster development budgets with advertising, with product sponsorship, with sponsored downloads.... We continue to look at ways that advertisers can get what they need, but at the same time, so gamers don't get games that are too over-commercialized.
You're looking at companies that are just lining up down the street to be involved in the game environment. I look back at the old days in my previous life at Sega, when we were actually paying for licenses of consumer-product companies to put in the game. I think about Crazy Taxi [Dreamcast], things like KFC and Pizza Hut.... Boy, the shoe is on the other foot now, no pun intended. The ability for us to be able to have control of this demographic and bring that to consumer-product companies...it's a powerful tool. It's already helping to defray some of the costs in the next-generation game environment, because these next-gen games are fabulous, but they're not cheap.
Xbox Live
EGM: What do you think are the immediate challenges for the games industry?
PM: It's not an easy business. The hardware is expensive, we're pushing the boundaries of where the silicon manufacturers can go, it's a heavy investment up front, and you've seen Sony announce that they think that the PlayStation 3's first year is going to cost them $1.7 billion in losses and startup costs alone.
So it's big bets. [We need to be] able to cover our costs as quickly as we possibly can, and start to bring the prices to the mass market and get to these 100, 150 million-unit console generations that we all need to be able to scale our business, and therefore reinvest in even better games. That's the key. We can't make this elitist. We cannot, absolutely, make this all about the early adopter and nobody else.
EGM: As someone who can directly impact the way the industry evolves, what is your vision for where this business is going?
PM: The industry is in as good a shape as I've seen it in the years that I've been involved. I remember years ago, people saying there was no way three consoles could ever coexist. Now, the Wii has carved out a position that is very distinctive, I think we've carved out a position that's distinctive, and the PlayStation 3 is in the process of carving out a position. I think that is good for consumers; it's good for retail. The more competitors that you have and the more that companies like Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo invest in the industry and invest in great development resources, and with publishers putting large amounts of money behind marketing...it makes for a very healthy industry. I hope that continues.
Don't worry, Xbox fans...Moore actually enjoys tackling the tough issues—he told us so himself. So we decided to do a one-year follow-up with the guy, and we threw in a few questions direct from our readers on EGMboards.1UP.com to force Moore to address his customers directly. We also ask him some of the same big-picture questions that we posed last month to Jack Tretton, Sony Computer Entertainment America's president and CEO, so you can compare the two's responses....
EGM: Last year we asked you about the successor to the Xbox 360, and you told us, "The platform development team is taking a welldeserved break, and they should come back in a year refreshed, looking for the next challenge." OK, it's been a year. What are those guys working on now?
Peter Moore: As with any platform group, they're always looking ahead once they deliver a system. They start looking at scenarios, four, six years from now—where will we be, what will the consumer be looking for, what will be the capabilities of silicon [chips] in 2011, 2012, whenever it is that the next next generation starts. These things take years to develop; you have to work with partners to be able to build the necessary infrastructure to make sure the next-generation console is truly a next-generation console. We're going to be ready for the next generation if and when it arrives.
Elite 360
EGM: A year ago you said the number of defective Xbox 360s was small, "no different from any other major consumer electronics product," but late in 2006 your company admitted that there was a higher than usual number of units coming in for repair. What happened?
PM: That comment was specifically referring to the early manufacturing in '05 and wasn't referring to all consoles manufactured. We took care of that through some warranty measures—we have increased our warranty to 12 months. We're trying to do right by the consumer.
EGM: We talked about how the 360 is a really loud machine, but it's even more apparent now next to the relatively quiet PS3 and Wii.
PM: I keep a very close eye on what consumers are saying. I really don't see that as being a major issue. Would we like to be able to have a quieter machine? I guess so. Is it feasibly possible? You're probably asking the wrong guy to start talking about technology for cooling fans.
EGM: We gave you a hard time about the 360 not being backward compatible with the entire Xbox 1 library. Now the Wii is out, and it can play GameCube discs, going as far as to offer ports for GameCube controllers. And the PlayStation 3, although it's not perfect at it, certainly supports a far greater percentage of past-generation titles than the 360 does (at least in the U.S.). Both these systems even let you transfer old save files. Is this just an area that you don't care to compete in?
PM: If you look back at when the issue of backward compatibility came up, I don't think anybody really felt we'd get to where we are today. We recently had another update that pushed us to over 300 games. It is something that is not easy to do, and you and I talked about this ad nauseum over the past couple of years, but we continue to work on it. We'll continue to add games to that list.
EGM: Why are we still getting voice-chat problems? It seems like nobody at Microsoft is able to give us a straight answer about this. There used to be echoes...now there are players who just can't hear each other. It's especially frustrating considering that the service costs $50 a year.
PM: Why are you still getting voicechat problems? [Laughs] I know you spoke with [Group Product Marketing Manager for Xbox Live Global] Aaron Greenberg, and we're actually going to try and come down and fix that onsite with you. It's pretty complex when we're connecting millions of people and 20-odd countries around the world with so many different protocols and broadband partners—every now and again you'll get some glitches. If this is something that is broader than more than a handful of people, my apologies, and we'll do everything we can to be able to fix it.
EGM: Are you saying that you and Aaron are going to come over to my house to fix my voice chat?
PM: [Laughs] I didn't say "Aaron and I," but I did say "we" meaning the broader Microsoft "we." Somebody will come to your house, yes. I want you to print this. Somebody will come to your house, diagnose the problem, and fix it...once we replicate it.
EGM: While we're giving you a hard time about stuff, to be fair, last year we complained that many of the 360 games looked only marginally better than their current-gen equivalents. But now that we've seen Gears of War, we're believers. But we're still not sure about that whole "games feeling like a lucid dream" thing that you were pitching....
Gears of War
PM: You know, it's funny. My son was home from [UC] Berkeley.... The Xbox 360 is on the big screen—I got a DLP projector—and let me tell you, you get involved in some of those late-night games on Xbox Live in Gears of War, and you are exhausted. I don't know if it's a lucid dream, but boy, you are transported to a different world. You're ducking and popping and shooting and watching your team's back...it transports you to what we used to talk about in my old PE-teacher days: the right side of the brain, where you move over into a different world. All of a sudden you're away from that left side of the brain—analytical thinking—and you're at war. It's intense and it's immersive, so yeah, one of these days something is going to come along where people will say it felt like a lucid dream. I dunno. [Laughs] You're going to hammer me on that every year, so I may as well just come up with a good story for it.
EGM: Another thing we have to give to you: Originally we thought the concept of Achievements was rather silly, but most of us are hooked now.
PM: Yeah, I watch all of you guys on your blogs. You're all hooked. You're chasing the most obscure Achievements I've ever seen. Things I never knew existed. I think it's human nature to want to achieve something, and then more importantly, let the rest of the world know you've achieved it.
EGM: You told us that Rare is very important to the future of the Xbox 360 platform. We love Viva Piñata, but it was a sales disappointment. Kameo and Perfect Dark Zero were relatively disappointing. So what else do you have? Is it all up to Banjo-Kazooie now?
Xbox Live
PM: Well, let's talk about Viva Piñata. You say it's a sales disappointment. Our long-term plan for Viva Piñata is not a typical videogame cycle of, "Let's look at the first four weeks and then make a determination whether it's been a success or failure after that." The people who play it, including your boss [editorial director John Davison], love it. And we also see a longer tail in Viva Piñata than we're seeing in other games—it continues to truck along nicely. It's a very important title that will broaden as we continue to reach out into a broader demographic of consumers. So don't write off Viva Piñata as anything but a success yet, because I think it does a lot of things for the platform that other games aren't doing for it.
Rare continues to be very important. Banjo will be along soon, and while you and I have gone back and forth on Kameo, I still think that was an important title at launch for us. It's easy to look at sales and dismiss it, but it's the more subjective opinion of having titles that were available at launch that you would never expect at launch. Viva Piñata will do the same thing this past holiday, and Banjo will do the same thing when it's available. Rare is still very, very important.
EGM: Whatever happened to community-driven microtransactions? You originally envisioned part of Xbox Live Marketplace being run by the community, where you could buy and download content designed by other gamers.
PM: I think that XNA Game Studio Express is the first step there. People are loving this idea of being able to build their own Xbox 360 games. And I think that's the first stepping stone to [other types of] user-created content. Those microtransactions are still in our plans. There's a lot of complexity involved with that...allowing consumers to interact with each other...but we're committed to [being] able to do that in the future.
EGM: In regard to offering HD-DVD as an optional add-on, you said in the past, "We're not forcing movie technology on game players, but instead are letting them choose how to personalize their experiences." If that's true, why not sell a Blu-ray player as well?
PM: Well, because...when we look at HD-DVD, we're looking at a superior format. Microsoft is a backer of HDDVD for a number of reasons, and I don't see any reason why we should support something that we don't believe in. We believe in HD-DVD.
EGM: Why not give the consumer the choice, though?
PM: Because the consumer's choosing HD-DVD. [Laughs all around] Look...we're not going to get embroiled in a movie-playback war. We're very clear on this. If you've already got your 360, $199 puts you in the high-def movie playback scenario, but I'm not burdening the box with it as our competitor's done. This is about games. It's not about movies.
EGM: Does that mean you wouldn't include a built-in HD-DVD player in future iterations of the Xbox 360?
PM: No, no, it's about choice. We're absolutely focused on consumers that want to play games, and if they're fortunate enough to be the small minority right now that have the equipment to take advantage of the new generation of high-definition movie playback, then at their choice they can buy an HD-DVD player for $199.
EGM: Why are we paying for Xbox Live Gold if Sony can offer PlayStation Network for free?
Xbox Live
PM: Well, it's interesting...we're now 5 million-plus members strong. When we look at the experience that $50 a year is giving people, in relation to the experience that I have certainly seen with the PS3 online network, I don't think there's a comparison yet.
People say the value for their money is the experience of having single gamertags and identities, voice chat in all games...you talk about Achievements...to be able to see achievements in your gamer profile, know who your friends are, have this consistent quality of experience across all games.... It's something that we do and do very, very well. We're now into our fifth year of building this thing out...I haven't found anybody that complains about paying $50 a year for the Xbox Live Gold subscription. Haven't found anybody at all.
EGM: Isn't there a way to kick the foul-mouthed, 12-year-old racist homophobes off of Xbox Live a little bit more quickly?
PM: [Laughs] Well, you know, we have millions of people now that can be on Live, and it's not easy. We do our utmost to govern. There's a lot of selfgoverning going on as well that we appreciate—the community reporting people who are exactly what you talk about: foul-mouthed, racist, homophobic...and we do everything we can to quickly react to the complaints.
But I apologize to anybody that's offended by [inappropriate behavior], particularly if they're going into games that are not Mature-rated and are hearing things. I would just encourage the community to self-police.
EGM: What's the point of purchasing a core Xbox 360 to save $100 if you have to buy—
PM: To save $100!
EGM: But you have to pay $40 to get a memory card to make up for the lack of a hard drive.
PM: So you're saving $60.
EGM: But these memory cards aren't even big enough for the upcoming content you have on Xbox Live Marketplace....
PM: We need to offer choice to the consumers, and not everybody wants a hard drive—a memory unit is just fine for their purposes. Look, we would love for everybody to have a hard drive, and we would love for everybody to connect their box to broadband, but we also recognize that the majority of people outside the United States don't have access to broadband right now, although that's quickly changing. We're trying to offer the choice.
EGM: The certification process for Xbox Live Arcade games has taken a robust opportunity that Microsoft had to innovate in the space and clogged things up. We hear a lot of horror stories from developers with games in certification limbo, and it seems like Nintendo is capitalizing by shoveling out up to four titles per week on the Wii's Virtual Console. Do you feel like this might be a missed opportunity for you?
PM: No. You use the term "shoveling out," and that's what we're trying to avoid. Arcade needs to be something that's managed very closely from a quality point of view. There's a cost involved in this, and what we don't want to do is "shovel" things out and make the experience that little bit more diluted. I think the publishers and the developers are all getting used to our quality standards now, and we've certainly got no shortage of concepts that are coming in.
But don't expect us to shovel anything out. Not having to sit through bad games to buy good games is something we're all about.
EGM: With the continued success of the PlayStation 2, why has Microsoft left the Xbox 1 to wither away? Why abandon the potential cash flow with a wider audience?
PM: Well, we have tried to give consumers enough notice on what our intentions are. The PlayStation 2 continues to do well, as you say, and my plaudits go out to Sony on that, but we've moved forward. The Xbox 1 continues to be something that our third-party partners develop and publish games for. But we have determined that we need to move on to the next gen, and the Xbox 360 is our focus.
EGM: What would have to happen at the end of this current Xbox 360 cycle for you to want to support it longer and more heavily than you did Xbox 1?
PM: While we're talking hypothetically about, I don't know, four to six years from now, our plans are to continue to support the Xbox 360 for as many years as consumers want to buy it. I think that first-party plays a large role in that. When you think of Halo, Gears of War, Fable, Forza, and Project Gotham, to name just a few, you now have franchises that we can continue to extend longer and deeper into the lifecycle than we [were able to] in the first generation. [On Xbox 1] you could have said there was Halo and not much else, for better or for worse. We've continued to build on a five- to 10-year plan with first party that you're now starting to see the benefits of.
Halo
EGM: Now that it's out, how do you view the Wii?
PM: The same way when I first saw it last year: It's a very innovative device. It's done incredibly well at the holiday period and retailers seem to be very happy. The question that remains is, how long will the experience be innovative to consumers, and what are the legs of this thing? Is it a real next-gen contender that can continue deep into the lifecycle, that can continue to meet the numbers?
EGM: Do you have one yourself?
PM: I don't. I was hoping my friend Reggie [Fils-Aime, Nintendo's president and COO] would send me one, but there's plenty around here that I get to play with. My house is an Xbox 360 house. And a Games for Windows house, I might add.
EGM: How do you view the PlayStation 3?
PM: Sony clearly had a shaky start, and I think even they will admit that. I'm a little disturbed from an industry point of view to actually see them available at retail just recently...still sitting on the shelf. I don't know what that's telling me. I certainly think Resistance has done a good job for them, but the games that come to mind trail off pretty quickly after that.
EGM: Some analysts are predicting that the PlayStation 3 will end up the market leader in a few years despite its stumble out of the gates. Why do you think that is?
PM: I don't know what the analysts would [look at] right now—vis-á-vis the price point, the quality of the games, the number of units they're shipping, their supply chain scheduling on a global basis—that would indicate the PS3 is going to beat the Wii or the Xbox 360. The facts don't bear that out right now. Maybe the historical strength of the PlayStation brand is something that they're looking at, to say, "Well, it's happened twice, therefore it must happen a third time." Maybe they think that Blu-ray is going to be the de facto high-def movie playback format this year, and that consumers will be clamoring to pay extra money to get a Blu-ray player as part of the PlayStation 3 experience. I don't know. I guess you'd have to ask them.
EGM: Sony's seeing a few former exclusives head to the Xbox 360 as well, such as Grand Theft Auto 4 and Virtua Fighter 5. This is good news for you, but it seems to make the two platforms feel...a little bit more homogenized. So besides a few first-party games, what defines your platform?
PM: I think you absolutely downplay the importance of first-party. There's not going to be the equivalent of a Grand Theft Auto like there was in the previous generation—a third-party exclusive that will determine winners and losers in this next generation. It will be the power of the franchises that first-party develops and delivers on a regular basis. That's where we feel really good about where we stand in this next generation.
And of course, having some key third-party exclusive games is very important. I'll point to Lost Planet...on the heels of what we did with Dead Rising. I'll point to BioShock. I'll point to Splinter Cell 5. So when you combine what I think is a very strong portfolio from a first-party point of view, and then you add some key exclusives from third party, and then having Xbox Live as a very powerful layer all over that...that's why we feel real good about what we can offer to the consumer.
Bio Shock
EGM: What is the deal with Halo 3? There's no other game out there that could get away with putting out updates on just a gun or something minor like that....
PM: I just think it recognizes the voracity and the passion around Halo nation, that we can update a weapon, update a vehicle, or add a character, and volumes...tomes are written about it. People look at it like a conspiracy theory, and people break down frame by frame anything that we send them. It's in recognition of the power of this franchise around the world that any morsel of information that we provide is voraciously gobbled up.
EGM: If there's one game or franchise you could steal away from the competition, what would it be?
PM: You know, I've always been a huge fan of Nintendo intellectual property from the early days of owning a Super NES, and when I think of franchises that have defined our industry, there's probably none bigger for me than Mario. I'm sure the headline will be "MOORE WANTS MARIO ON XBOX 360," but when you think of our industry over the past 25 years, and you think of the one character that would define what videogaming is about, it's that little Italian plumber.
EGM: When will ad-supported games actually change the economics of games for gamers? Will you be passing along the savings to consumers, or do you think it will ultimately let you afford more ambitious projects?
PM: There are numerous ways now that we can continue to bolster development budgets with advertising, with product sponsorship, with sponsored downloads.... We continue to look at ways that advertisers can get what they need, but at the same time, so gamers don't get games that are too over-commercialized.
You're looking at companies that are just lining up down the street to be involved in the game environment. I look back at the old days in my previous life at Sega, when we were actually paying for licenses of consumer-product companies to put in the game. I think about Crazy Taxi [Dreamcast], things like KFC and Pizza Hut.... Boy, the shoe is on the other foot now, no pun intended. The ability for us to be able to have control of this demographic and bring that to consumer-product companies...it's a powerful tool. It's already helping to defray some of the costs in the next-generation game environment, because these next-gen games are fabulous, but they're not cheap.
Xbox Live
EGM: What do you think are the immediate challenges for the games industry?
PM: It's not an easy business. The hardware is expensive, we're pushing the boundaries of where the silicon manufacturers can go, it's a heavy investment up front, and you've seen Sony announce that they think that the PlayStation 3's first year is going to cost them $1.7 billion in losses and startup costs alone.
So it's big bets. [We need to be] able to cover our costs as quickly as we possibly can, and start to bring the prices to the mass market and get to these 100, 150 million-unit console generations that we all need to be able to scale our business, and therefore reinvest in even better games. That's the key. We can't make this elitist. We cannot, absolutely, make this all about the early adopter and nobody else.
EGM: As someone who can directly impact the way the industry evolves, what is your vision for where this business is going?
PM: The industry is in as good a shape as I've seen it in the years that I've been involved. I remember years ago, people saying there was no way three consoles could ever coexist. Now, the Wii has carved out a position that is very distinctive, I think we've carved out a position that's distinctive, and the PlayStation 3 is in the process of carving out a position. I think that is good for consumers; it's good for retail. The more competitors that you have and the more that companies like Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo invest in the industry and invest in great development resources, and with publishers putting large amounts of money behind marketing...it makes for a very healthy industry. I hope that continues.