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Intervju med Peter Moore - Snakker om HD-DVD addon.
======================================
Joystiq Interview: Peter Moore @ CES
Posted Jan 23rd 2006 12:20PM by James Ransom-Wiley
Filed under: Culture
This interview is a bit of a straggler from CES, but a couple of weeks ago Peter Rojas from Engadget and I got some face time with Peter Moore. Read on to hear what Moore had to say about the Xbox 360’s forthcoming HD-DVD drive, how long we’ll have to wait to see a truly console-defining title, his thoughts on the 360’s Japanese launch, and of course, how Microsoft is preparing for the head-to-head battle with Sony's PlayStation 3...
Thanks for taking a few minutes out of your schedule today.
My pleasure.
We know CES is pretty insane, so we really appreciate it. So how has it gone so far? It’s been a couple months now since the launch of the Xbox 360.
Yeah, actually it’s only been six weeks.
Has it really only been six weeks?
Yeah.
Funny how it feels like it’s been a lot longer.
Yeah, it feels like a lifetime. That’s because we went November 22nd and then we went December 2nd in Europe, and then, of course, we were all to Japan on December 10th. So clearly in the western world in particular it’s phenomenal.
And our biggest challenge, as I said at the keynote with Bill Gates, is meeting demand. We are continuing to expedite as many consoles into Europe, in particular, where demand is even heavier than it is in the United States -- as difficult as that is to believe. We’re doing everything we can to meet that demand, and hopefully later on in the Spring you’ll be able to actually walk in and buy one off the shelf.
What has been the mix of sales for the Premium vs the Core systems?
It’s been almost exclusively for the Premium SKU for the Xbox 360. We predicted that and put retail levels in accordingly.
So that was the emphasis?
Yeah, but we wanted there to be a lower-priced option as well. What we found, obviously, is that the guy who had to have it at midnight that night, if he couldn’t get a Premium one, got a Core system and bought a hard drive.
You’ve announced plans to offer an HD-DVD external drive attachment later this year, how do you think that’s going to factor into things going forward? Is that something that might be bundled, or is that going to be exclusively something that you can buy as an add-on?
There’s a number of different tactics you could do with it.
You could bundle it. You could sell it separately. I mean, we really wanted to, as I said when I announced it, make it about choice. It’s about movie playback. There’s no doubt that high definition movies are going to play in our homes in the next 12 months. We’re a great believer in the HD-DVD format, obviously, and I’m sure Bill reiterated that yesterday. One thing we don’t want to do is burden the box for consumers who just want to play games and force in a high definition drive, you know --
--Which would raise the price.
Of course it would. And then that hurts your supply again, because there are not millions of them available. There are people, I’m one, you guys are probably the same, that would say, "You know what, I’ll buy an external drive because I’ve already got the core of what I need there in my 360.” Do I want to buy another? I don’t know if you saw the box that Bill showed, but it’s a Toshiba box, $500. I can buy an external drive that can, that I can have in my house, and if I’m just playing games I can actually pop that drive in a drawer somewhere. That’s the perfect solution for me.
How much is that drive going to be?
Don’t know. We haven’t made any pricing decisions, but clearly it’ll be cheaper than the standalone.
And it’s going to hook in through the USB port?
Don’t know yet. There are a number of ways. We thought this through in the design of the box, and so there are a number of ways it can connect.
What’s your reaction to the launch in Japan? Was it anticipated?
Well it’s always anticipated -- it’s not easy over there. Me more than anybody knows that, but when we built our plans we built our plans around a software title launch, both in quantity and quality, that didn’t quite make it. I mean, DOA4 was 19 days late. Big difference. We were marketing DOA4, and stuff slips. You get to the race of certification. You find things out. You want to make sure that you don’t, in any way, challenge the integrity or the quality of the product.
So you say, no. It’s not quite right, not quite ready, want to slip it a few days. And that affects things, but I’m reasonably happy. I was over there for the five days of the launch. A lot of very loyal Xbox consumers over there. It’s really a long-term plan. This is a marathon, not a sprint.
Sakaguchi continues to work on both Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey. [It’s] very different than the original Xbox where we actually had a pretty good line up at launch and we then fell off a cliff and didn’t have the support of the third parties. Now the support of the third parties over there is unequivocal. We’ve got things like Dead Rising coming and we haven’t shipped Project Gotham over there yet. We haven’t shipped Kameo over there yet. We’ve deliberately merchandised the portfolio to spread it all out. There’s long-term strategy there, don’t let early numbers worry you because you know, it’s my job to worry. Japan is tough. You know it’s tough, but we believe in the Japanese market. We’ll continue to hammer away there.
With every console it seems like it takes developers a little while to really get the hang of it and figure out how to push the capabilities of the box, and eventually there’s always a title or a handful of titles that become the killer titles for that console and almost drive a second wave of adoption, just like Halo 2 did with the original Xbox and Vice City did with the PlayStation 2.
Right.
How long do you think it’s going to be until we see developers come out with a game or a couple of games that really push the capabilities of the console?
This year.
Early this year? Second half of this year?
Well, there are titles that excite me right now like Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion. The team that has done all our Ghost Recon, there’s Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter. The scenes I’ve seen look spectacular, and their ability to take advantage of Xbox Live is huge. Even Lara Croft is looking great, so Lara’s coming. And then of course we’ve got Ninety-Nine Nights out of Japan that we are very excited about.
The real title that I think everybody’s looking at is Gears of War, and we’re allowing Cliffy B. and the boys that extra time to not make it a launch title. They’re brilliant at what they do, and we’ve continued to show the progression of Gears of War, whether it’s at E3, and then XO5, and then TGS. That will be a huge title, and then Crackdown from Real Time Worlds is a title that I am very excited about, having seen some of the latest builds just recently. Very unique art style, very unique camera perspective of how you play the game.
So you’re confident that there will be titles that redefine gaming rather than just more of the same?
Yeah, you can’t just do a Grand Theft clone. I mean, a lot of publishers have attempted to do that and it doesn’t work, just like a lot of people try to do a Halo clone and it really doesn’t work.
With Crackdown what you’ll see is a vertical perspective in the camera angle. A lot of the action takes place on top of the buildings. It’s very unique. The art style is very, very unique.
But aside from the graphical upgrades and things like that, Xbox Live is really the key part of Xbox.
What steps do you take to push third-party developers to come up with new ways to use Xbox Live?
Well, it’s part of what we call showcases and essentials. As a core essential, there’s got to be some form of Live, whether it’s simply Live-aware or looking at tournaments and ladders, and then, of course, all the different ways to have massively multi-player. There are levels of Live playability in just about every title, and there are several elements of Live that have captured the imagination of gamers in the last few weeks. Xbox Live Arcade, which we originally thought was for my mom or for my sister, people who don’t play games, well, the hard core of the hardcore are saying “This is addictive stuff.” And I announced Street Fighter II and Texas Hold ‘Em Poker. It’s sponsored, by the way, so you won’t have to pay for it. 20 games will be available, so Arcade is going to be something. I’d sort of like it to be an indie films-type thing for smaller publishers who’ve got great IP, Geometry Wars is a great example. We put a small team on it and said, “Let’s take advantage of the 360 and let’s make it a visually stunning, fast-paced game.” I love Geometry Wars, although it gets a little quick for an old guy like me who’s not quite there.
It was certainly a surprise hit.
People love it. They play the demo, and they download it for a few bucks and they own it and they love to play it. And if you’ve got a big screen or something, it really is beautiful eye-candy
And then Marketplace. Marketplace is huge. The concept of achievements is addictive. I’m watching the boards where people are saying, “How did you get that? How did you figure that one out?” That is really creating this tremendous community interaction, people love to show stripes and badges.
You go up there and if you’re behind you feel like you’ve got to go on. I’ve got to play for two hours because I’ve got to catch up with my friends. We love that. Then there’s ability to offer trailers. Hollywood’s waking up to the fact that it’s a high def box, so the Mission Impossible III trailer was on there.
The demos are a great way to showcase things.
Oh, well, the Fight Night thing was spectacular. For me it just feels like a whole new business model. When we showed that off we said it’s immediately available right now everywhere in the world. Get your controller. Go to Live. One button download. And it downloaded. Our server farms lit up and people were playing it. This ability to instantly bring in a live demo to your box and play it, you don’t have to wait to go to a magazine and get a disk, pop it in the drive.
That is the future, and we’ve always said that Live is the differentiator. We still scratch our heads that the other guys really don’t see this or are certainly not making any real pronouncements about a global service that builds community and brings people together.
Speaking of the other guys, it seems like the PS3 has been something of a no-show here at CES. Neither Stringer’s keynote nor the press preview the previous day really talked very much about the PS3 at all. At some point this year you’re going to have your major competition entering the market, how confident are you feeling? Do you risk becoming overconfident?
No. I mean, first of all, Sony’s a great company. They’ve come off two spectacular generations of consoles. You never underestimate the power of your competition. The only thing you can do, the only thing you can control, is your ability to execute flawlessly with your own product, with your own marketing, with your relationships with publishers, building software that is innovative like Xbox Live, connecting people around the world. That’s what we’re about.
The other guys are launching this spring. Don’t know what that means. I can’t worry about that. What I need to worry about is making sure that my consumers’ experience on a global basis is world-class.
Are you going to time some major titles to coincide with the launch?
Such as? [Laughing] Well the interesting thing is, when is the launch? How can I time for something when I don’t know when it is? So first of all, the answer is no. To somehow artificially plan something to combat things? They’ll launch, let’s face it. They’ll launch and it’ll be very successful.
There’s no doubt, regardless of whether I throw a title in there or an update of Live or whatever, that it’s not going to affect their launch. You don’t think they’re not going to sell out of PlayStation 3s, do you? You think that if I could create a piece of IP so that PlayStation 3s would arrive at Best Buy and they’d sit on the shelves? Come on, it’s not going to happen. It never happens with a console launch, so the ability for me to distract the consumer, I mean, I’d rather focus on the fact that whatever we do, whether it’s what Rare’s doing or what Bungie’s doing, that we make the best games possible and that we release it when it’s ready and that it moves our platform.
It’s stupid, ridiculous, and almost impossible to say to 80 guys programming, “I want you to make sure they see you can be ready to go two weeks from now.” It just doesn’t work. You know what you end up with? You end up with a sub-par game because you’re actually building a game with an alternative plan in mind other than making a great game. Game development doesn’t work that way, and anything that is of the quality of a Halo franchise, you do not risk screwing it up. And, by the way, don’t forget, we’ve done all this without Halo.
So yeah, you’ve got Gears of War coming. You’ve got Crackdown coming. You’ve got BioWare and Silicon Knights working on exclusive titles.
The Halo Nation would string me out from some flagpole if I used Halo to be a competitive counter balance to something else, for it to be anything other than for it to be the greatest game ever on an Xbox console -- or on any console. I mean, people love the conspiracy theories, like that it’s already ready to go. You know, no, that is not the case at all. We have a very precious piece of intellectual property in the Halo franchise. As you know, we’re doing the movie, and we’re delighted that Peter Jackson is working on it with us. There’s too much invested in this franchise and the Halo Nation is too dear to us to use them as pawns in some bigger game. It doesn’t work that way.
Jumping back to Live, I’m curious if you have any numbers about the proportion of people that are using Gold memberships.
We haven’t broken down Silver versus Gold. Our first priority is get people to connect the box, and the announcement I made is that 50% of all boxes are already connected. We have a very clear view on who’s doing what connecting.
Silver has done exactly what we intended it to do. It’s that little step for the gamer who’s a little intimidated about getting involved in a Halo class, but loves the idea, and they already have DSL or a cable modem enabled. There’s no commitment, no credit card, bend over, plug it in, and all of a sudden I’ve got the Mission Impossible III trailer. I’ve got my gamer achievements up there, all the stuff you can do in Silver. Gold is important because of the early adopters, the hard core. They’re probably Xbox Nation from the first version and they love Xbox Live, but silver will continue to be important and grow in its importance going forward.
Broadband adoption is becoming ubiquitous, particularly in Europe, where we had a tough time with Live because we said we need your credit card. In Europe people typically don’t carry credit cards and believe me, our adoption rates in Europe are very, very strong. We’re delighted about that.
When you look back at Xbox Live, people laughed at us. I mean, you go back just a few short years ago, and now everybody that’s come in here in the last two days says, “I’ve played it. I love arcade achievements, my profile up there, Marketplace, Microsoft Points, Hexic, Jewel Quest, Zuma, Joust, Gauntlet.” I mean, people gush about the experience, and it’s interesting, they’ll talk for 30 minutes and they’ll realize they haven’t even talked about a game.
Now games are the core, let’s not forget that, but the fact that we’re delivering a great entertainment experience that fits into peoples’ lifestyles is exciting a lot of people. I’m playing Call of Duty 2 right now. I don’t know if you’ve had the chance to do that with real surround sound, but it’s just spectacular. That and PGR3, those are titles that are really pushing the envelope. With Gotham TV I just sit there and I’m watching two guys -- I have no idea who is racing -- embarrassing the heck out of me, but racing in Shinjuku or the streets of London. I don’t know if you’ve looked at Gotham TV, but it’s like you just pick two guys racing. I got an e-mail from Bill Gates, who loves Project Gotham. He’s been playing it, and he said, “I’ve watched these guys on Gorham TV and I’d love to know more about them.” Bill’s very good at thinking these things through. I’m watching one guy in a Ferrari and another in a Lamborghini, and I don’t know who they are, but I’ve got their gamer tags there, and boy, they’re really good. It’d be very cool to learn a little bit more about them. There’s privacy issues, but how cool would that be that then you could look at their game attack and then click in and maybe something pops up as a picture in picture. Here’s who I am. Here’s where I live. That’s the stuff that really builds community. It builds heroes out there. You know, guys like, Fatal1ty and those guys. And then the Korean phenomenon, these teams of guys that go out there. We’re not far away from being able to do that.
Thank you for your time!
Tatt fra Joystiq.com
======================================
Joystiq Interview: Peter Moore @ CES
Posted Jan 23rd 2006 12:20PM by James Ransom-Wiley
Filed under: Culture
This interview is a bit of a straggler from CES, but a couple of weeks ago Peter Rojas from Engadget and I got some face time with Peter Moore. Read on to hear what Moore had to say about the Xbox 360’s forthcoming HD-DVD drive, how long we’ll have to wait to see a truly console-defining title, his thoughts on the 360’s Japanese launch, and of course, how Microsoft is preparing for the head-to-head battle with Sony's PlayStation 3...
Thanks for taking a few minutes out of your schedule today.
My pleasure.
We know CES is pretty insane, so we really appreciate it. So how has it gone so far? It’s been a couple months now since the launch of the Xbox 360.
Yeah, actually it’s only been six weeks.
Has it really only been six weeks?
Yeah.
Funny how it feels like it’s been a lot longer.
Yeah, it feels like a lifetime. That’s because we went November 22nd and then we went December 2nd in Europe, and then, of course, we were all to Japan on December 10th. So clearly in the western world in particular it’s phenomenal.
And our biggest challenge, as I said at the keynote with Bill Gates, is meeting demand. We are continuing to expedite as many consoles into Europe, in particular, where demand is even heavier than it is in the United States -- as difficult as that is to believe. We’re doing everything we can to meet that demand, and hopefully later on in the Spring you’ll be able to actually walk in and buy one off the shelf.
What has been the mix of sales for the Premium vs the Core systems?
It’s been almost exclusively for the Premium SKU for the Xbox 360. We predicted that and put retail levels in accordingly.
So that was the emphasis?
Yeah, but we wanted there to be a lower-priced option as well. What we found, obviously, is that the guy who had to have it at midnight that night, if he couldn’t get a Premium one, got a Core system and bought a hard drive.
You’ve announced plans to offer an HD-DVD external drive attachment later this year, how do you think that’s going to factor into things going forward? Is that something that might be bundled, or is that going to be exclusively something that you can buy as an add-on?
There’s a number of different tactics you could do with it.
You could bundle it. You could sell it separately. I mean, we really wanted to, as I said when I announced it, make it about choice. It’s about movie playback. There’s no doubt that high definition movies are going to play in our homes in the next 12 months. We’re a great believer in the HD-DVD format, obviously, and I’m sure Bill reiterated that yesterday. One thing we don’t want to do is burden the box for consumers who just want to play games and force in a high definition drive, you know --
--Which would raise the price.
Of course it would. And then that hurts your supply again, because there are not millions of them available. There are people, I’m one, you guys are probably the same, that would say, "You know what, I’ll buy an external drive because I’ve already got the core of what I need there in my 360.” Do I want to buy another? I don’t know if you saw the box that Bill showed, but it’s a Toshiba box, $500. I can buy an external drive that can, that I can have in my house, and if I’m just playing games I can actually pop that drive in a drawer somewhere. That’s the perfect solution for me.
How much is that drive going to be?
Don’t know. We haven’t made any pricing decisions, but clearly it’ll be cheaper than the standalone.
And it’s going to hook in through the USB port?
Don’t know yet. There are a number of ways. We thought this through in the design of the box, and so there are a number of ways it can connect.
What’s your reaction to the launch in Japan? Was it anticipated?
Well it’s always anticipated -- it’s not easy over there. Me more than anybody knows that, but when we built our plans we built our plans around a software title launch, both in quantity and quality, that didn’t quite make it. I mean, DOA4 was 19 days late. Big difference. We were marketing DOA4, and stuff slips. You get to the race of certification. You find things out. You want to make sure that you don’t, in any way, challenge the integrity or the quality of the product.
So you say, no. It’s not quite right, not quite ready, want to slip it a few days. And that affects things, but I’m reasonably happy. I was over there for the five days of the launch. A lot of very loyal Xbox consumers over there. It’s really a long-term plan. This is a marathon, not a sprint.
Sakaguchi continues to work on both Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey. [It’s] very different than the original Xbox where we actually had a pretty good line up at launch and we then fell off a cliff and didn’t have the support of the third parties. Now the support of the third parties over there is unequivocal. We’ve got things like Dead Rising coming and we haven’t shipped Project Gotham over there yet. We haven’t shipped Kameo over there yet. We’ve deliberately merchandised the portfolio to spread it all out. There’s long-term strategy there, don’t let early numbers worry you because you know, it’s my job to worry. Japan is tough. You know it’s tough, but we believe in the Japanese market. We’ll continue to hammer away there.
With every console it seems like it takes developers a little while to really get the hang of it and figure out how to push the capabilities of the box, and eventually there’s always a title or a handful of titles that become the killer titles for that console and almost drive a second wave of adoption, just like Halo 2 did with the original Xbox and Vice City did with the PlayStation 2.
Right.
How long do you think it’s going to be until we see developers come out with a game or a couple of games that really push the capabilities of the console?
This year.
Early this year? Second half of this year?
Well, there are titles that excite me right now like Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion. The team that has done all our Ghost Recon, there’s Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter. The scenes I’ve seen look spectacular, and their ability to take advantage of Xbox Live is huge. Even Lara Croft is looking great, so Lara’s coming. And then of course we’ve got Ninety-Nine Nights out of Japan that we are very excited about.
The real title that I think everybody’s looking at is Gears of War, and we’re allowing Cliffy B. and the boys that extra time to not make it a launch title. They’re brilliant at what they do, and we’ve continued to show the progression of Gears of War, whether it’s at E3, and then XO5, and then TGS. That will be a huge title, and then Crackdown from Real Time Worlds is a title that I am very excited about, having seen some of the latest builds just recently. Very unique art style, very unique camera perspective of how you play the game.
So you’re confident that there will be titles that redefine gaming rather than just more of the same?
Yeah, you can’t just do a Grand Theft clone. I mean, a lot of publishers have attempted to do that and it doesn’t work, just like a lot of people try to do a Halo clone and it really doesn’t work.
With Crackdown what you’ll see is a vertical perspective in the camera angle. A lot of the action takes place on top of the buildings. It’s very unique. The art style is very, very unique.
But aside from the graphical upgrades and things like that, Xbox Live is really the key part of Xbox.
What steps do you take to push third-party developers to come up with new ways to use Xbox Live?
Well, it’s part of what we call showcases and essentials. As a core essential, there’s got to be some form of Live, whether it’s simply Live-aware or looking at tournaments and ladders, and then, of course, all the different ways to have massively multi-player. There are levels of Live playability in just about every title, and there are several elements of Live that have captured the imagination of gamers in the last few weeks. Xbox Live Arcade, which we originally thought was for my mom or for my sister, people who don’t play games, well, the hard core of the hardcore are saying “This is addictive stuff.” And I announced Street Fighter II and Texas Hold ‘Em Poker. It’s sponsored, by the way, so you won’t have to pay for it. 20 games will be available, so Arcade is going to be something. I’d sort of like it to be an indie films-type thing for smaller publishers who’ve got great IP, Geometry Wars is a great example. We put a small team on it and said, “Let’s take advantage of the 360 and let’s make it a visually stunning, fast-paced game.” I love Geometry Wars, although it gets a little quick for an old guy like me who’s not quite there.
It was certainly a surprise hit.
People love it. They play the demo, and they download it for a few bucks and they own it and they love to play it. And if you’ve got a big screen or something, it really is beautiful eye-candy
And then Marketplace. Marketplace is huge. The concept of achievements is addictive. I’m watching the boards where people are saying, “How did you get that? How did you figure that one out?” That is really creating this tremendous community interaction, people love to show stripes and badges.
You go up there and if you’re behind you feel like you’ve got to go on. I’ve got to play for two hours because I’ve got to catch up with my friends. We love that. Then there’s ability to offer trailers. Hollywood’s waking up to the fact that it’s a high def box, so the Mission Impossible III trailer was on there.
The demos are a great way to showcase things.
Oh, well, the Fight Night thing was spectacular. For me it just feels like a whole new business model. When we showed that off we said it’s immediately available right now everywhere in the world. Get your controller. Go to Live. One button download. And it downloaded. Our server farms lit up and people were playing it. This ability to instantly bring in a live demo to your box and play it, you don’t have to wait to go to a magazine and get a disk, pop it in the drive.
That is the future, and we’ve always said that Live is the differentiator. We still scratch our heads that the other guys really don’t see this or are certainly not making any real pronouncements about a global service that builds community and brings people together.
Speaking of the other guys, it seems like the PS3 has been something of a no-show here at CES. Neither Stringer’s keynote nor the press preview the previous day really talked very much about the PS3 at all. At some point this year you’re going to have your major competition entering the market, how confident are you feeling? Do you risk becoming overconfident?
No. I mean, first of all, Sony’s a great company. They’ve come off two spectacular generations of consoles. You never underestimate the power of your competition. The only thing you can do, the only thing you can control, is your ability to execute flawlessly with your own product, with your own marketing, with your relationships with publishers, building software that is innovative like Xbox Live, connecting people around the world. That’s what we’re about.
The other guys are launching this spring. Don’t know what that means. I can’t worry about that. What I need to worry about is making sure that my consumers’ experience on a global basis is world-class.
Are you going to time some major titles to coincide with the launch?
Such as? [Laughing] Well the interesting thing is, when is the launch? How can I time for something when I don’t know when it is? So first of all, the answer is no. To somehow artificially plan something to combat things? They’ll launch, let’s face it. They’ll launch and it’ll be very successful.
There’s no doubt, regardless of whether I throw a title in there or an update of Live or whatever, that it’s not going to affect their launch. You don’t think they’re not going to sell out of PlayStation 3s, do you? You think that if I could create a piece of IP so that PlayStation 3s would arrive at Best Buy and they’d sit on the shelves? Come on, it’s not going to happen. It never happens with a console launch, so the ability for me to distract the consumer, I mean, I’d rather focus on the fact that whatever we do, whether it’s what Rare’s doing or what Bungie’s doing, that we make the best games possible and that we release it when it’s ready and that it moves our platform.
It’s stupid, ridiculous, and almost impossible to say to 80 guys programming, “I want you to make sure they see you can be ready to go two weeks from now.” It just doesn’t work. You know what you end up with? You end up with a sub-par game because you’re actually building a game with an alternative plan in mind other than making a great game. Game development doesn’t work that way, and anything that is of the quality of a Halo franchise, you do not risk screwing it up. And, by the way, don’t forget, we’ve done all this without Halo.
So yeah, you’ve got Gears of War coming. You’ve got Crackdown coming. You’ve got BioWare and Silicon Knights working on exclusive titles.
The Halo Nation would string me out from some flagpole if I used Halo to be a competitive counter balance to something else, for it to be anything other than for it to be the greatest game ever on an Xbox console -- or on any console. I mean, people love the conspiracy theories, like that it’s already ready to go. You know, no, that is not the case at all. We have a very precious piece of intellectual property in the Halo franchise. As you know, we’re doing the movie, and we’re delighted that Peter Jackson is working on it with us. There’s too much invested in this franchise and the Halo Nation is too dear to us to use them as pawns in some bigger game. It doesn’t work that way.
Jumping back to Live, I’m curious if you have any numbers about the proportion of people that are using Gold memberships.
We haven’t broken down Silver versus Gold. Our first priority is get people to connect the box, and the announcement I made is that 50% of all boxes are already connected. We have a very clear view on who’s doing what connecting.
Silver has done exactly what we intended it to do. It’s that little step for the gamer who’s a little intimidated about getting involved in a Halo class, but loves the idea, and they already have DSL or a cable modem enabled. There’s no commitment, no credit card, bend over, plug it in, and all of a sudden I’ve got the Mission Impossible III trailer. I’ve got my gamer achievements up there, all the stuff you can do in Silver. Gold is important because of the early adopters, the hard core. They’re probably Xbox Nation from the first version and they love Xbox Live, but silver will continue to be important and grow in its importance going forward.
Broadband adoption is becoming ubiquitous, particularly in Europe, where we had a tough time with Live because we said we need your credit card. In Europe people typically don’t carry credit cards and believe me, our adoption rates in Europe are very, very strong. We’re delighted about that.
When you look back at Xbox Live, people laughed at us. I mean, you go back just a few short years ago, and now everybody that’s come in here in the last two days says, “I’ve played it. I love arcade achievements, my profile up there, Marketplace, Microsoft Points, Hexic, Jewel Quest, Zuma, Joust, Gauntlet.” I mean, people gush about the experience, and it’s interesting, they’ll talk for 30 minutes and they’ll realize they haven’t even talked about a game.
Now games are the core, let’s not forget that, but the fact that we’re delivering a great entertainment experience that fits into peoples’ lifestyles is exciting a lot of people. I’m playing Call of Duty 2 right now. I don’t know if you’ve had the chance to do that with real surround sound, but it’s just spectacular. That and PGR3, those are titles that are really pushing the envelope. With Gotham TV I just sit there and I’m watching two guys -- I have no idea who is racing -- embarrassing the heck out of me, but racing in Shinjuku or the streets of London. I don’t know if you’ve looked at Gotham TV, but it’s like you just pick two guys racing. I got an e-mail from Bill Gates, who loves Project Gotham. He’s been playing it, and he said, “I’ve watched these guys on Gorham TV and I’d love to know more about them.” Bill’s very good at thinking these things through. I’m watching one guy in a Ferrari and another in a Lamborghini, and I don’t know who they are, but I’ve got their gamer tags there, and boy, they’re really good. It’d be very cool to learn a little bit more about them. There’s privacy issues, but how cool would that be that then you could look at their game attack and then click in and maybe something pops up as a picture in picture. Here’s who I am. Here’s where I live. That’s the stuff that really builds community. It builds heroes out there. You know, guys like, Fatal1ty and those guys. And then the Korean phenomenon, these teams of guys that go out there. We’re not far away from being able to do that.
Thank you for your time!
Tatt fra Joystiq.com
http://www.gamergod.com/article.php?articl...&category_id=49
Fant den artikkelen idag, og selv om jeg ikke har Xbox360 så stemmer det der mye med de inntrykkene jeg har fått den siste tiden. Noen som er enige\uenige?
Fant den artikkelen idag, og selv om jeg ikke har Xbox360 så stemmer det der mye med de inntrykkene jeg har fått den siste tiden. Noen som er enige\uenige?
Den artikkelen oppsummerer til punkt og prikke hva jeg mener om burk360. I min vennekrets har jeg fått stempelet som Nintendo-fanboy, men jeg prøvde å holde et åpent sinn til boksen før og under release, selv om jeg stilte meg veldig i tvil.. Nå i ettertid har de selv ikke vært særlig imponerte over hverken grafikken eller spillutvalget, det eneste som har slått oss at selve menyene med tekst var behagelige å lese dersom man har en HDTV. Selv har jeg i ettertid bare fått bekrefta mine mistanker.
Vel jeg er ikke helt enig i alt som stod i den artikelen. Han fikk ivertfall meg til å lure på hva han driver med når han skrev at maskinen bråket enten pga HD eller dvd drevet.... :blunk:
Men anyways..mye er jo sant. Det kunne vært mye bedre utvalg av spill og Microsoft må skjønne at Japsene holder seg til Nintendo og Sony.
Men jeg synes X360 er en stor hit. Den er utsolgt overalt og folk er fortsatt gale etter å få tak i en maskin.....
Grafikken til spillene som er ute varierer jo veldig da, noen er bra mens noen er en direkte port fra Xbox eller Pc.
Men med spill som PG3 og FN3 så viser dem litt hva som ligger å sparker under plasten. Det er rettogslett for tidlig å si enda hvor bra den er. Men innen juli i år så skal det etter planen være 50 spill til X360 ute. Om det er realistiskt tviler jeg litt på.
Men er det noe som er sikkert så er det at om 3-5 mnd så vil vi kunne se om X360 leverer eller ikke. Så langt så leverer den for meg ivertfall.
Og at teksten er behagelig å lese dersom en har HD tv er nok ikke så rart i. Men jeg har et vanelig high end tv som gir meg et helt sinsykt bra bilde.
Men anyways..mye er jo sant. Det kunne vært mye bedre utvalg av spill og Microsoft må skjønne at Japsene holder seg til Nintendo og Sony.
Men jeg synes X360 er en stor hit. Den er utsolgt overalt og folk er fortsatt gale etter å få tak i en maskin.....
Grafikken til spillene som er ute varierer jo veldig da, noen er bra mens noen er en direkte port fra Xbox eller Pc.
Men med spill som PG3 og FN3 så viser dem litt hva som ligger å sparker under plasten. Det er rettogslett for tidlig å si enda hvor bra den er. Men innen juli i år så skal det etter planen være 50 spill til X360 ute. Om det er realistiskt tviler jeg litt på.
Men er det noe som er sikkert så er det at om 3-5 mnd så vil vi kunne se om X360 leverer eller ikke. Så langt så leverer den for meg ivertfall.
Og at teksten er behagelig å lese dersom en har HD tv er nok ikke så rart i. Men jeg har et vanelig high end tv som gir meg et helt sinsykt bra bilde.
Det var jo nøyaktig det som var poenget med artikkelen. Microsoft har produsert langt ifra nok maskiner til vesten, mens de flyter over i Japan. Folk er fortsatt gale etter å få tak i en maskin fordi den har blitt så overhypa før release og fordi den er vanskelig å få tak i. De som allerede har den har blitt skuffa over det labre spillutvalget eller starter treningsstudio med noen strømadaptere. Resten av teksten gikk ut på hvor "bra" maskinen er med tanke på at den har vært ute i noen måneder. Spill-lineup for den nærmere fremtid er ikke særlig imponerende, spess med tanke på releasen til PS3 (som jeg også stiller meg i tvil til fordi det blir et helvete for firmaer å lage spill til den, but that's beside the point).
Stor hit? Salgsmessig et "tja" for den solgte jo ut fort som faen, og mange fler vil ha den, men flere andre konsoller har solgt langt mer. Populært et "tja" for altfor mange er fornøyd bare ved å ha nestegenerasjons runkemateriale under TV-en. "zOMG! It's so powerful and it's expensive, thus it's good!"
Stor hit? Salgsmessig et "tja" for den solgte jo ut fort som faen, og mange fler vil ha den, men flere andre konsoller har solgt langt mer. Populært et "tja" for altfor mange er fornøyd bare ved å ha nestegenerasjons runkemateriale under TV-en. "zOMG! It's so powerful and it's expensive, thus it's good!"
Altså, kan like så godt bare droppe argumentet med at maskinen blir et helvete å lage spill til. Samma sa de om PS2 og Sony seiret uten problem. Og endte opp med å være maskinen som fikk flest topptitler.
Folk klager litt over vanskelighetene med å lage spill til den i begynnelsen. Helt til de kommer inn i det og ser mulighetene.
PS3 kommer ikke til å feile på det punktet.
Men at Xbox360 launch var krampeaktig, skal ikke krangle med noen der. En grunn til at jeg bare sitter pent og venter til maskinen faktisk er verdt pengene. Trodde PDZ skulle bli the shit. Men når det ikke ble så fantastisk allikevel så ser jeg ikke at det finnes noen must have titler i det hele tatt enda.
Folk klager litt over vanskelighetene med å lage spill til den i begynnelsen. Helt til de kommer inn i det og ser mulighetene.
PS3 kommer ikke til å feile på det punktet.
Men at Xbox360 launch var krampeaktig, skal ikke krangle med noen der. En grunn til at jeg bare sitter pent og venter til maskinen faktisk er verdt pengene. Trodde PDZ skulle bli the shit. Men når det ikke ble så fantastisk allikevel så ser jeg ikke at det finnes noen must have titler i det hele tatt enda.
Jeg kan ikke huske at det ble sagt om Playstation 2, og det kan ikke vært seriøst for PS2 er nogelunde lik i oppbygning som PS1. At den har fått så mange topptitler er pga Sonys "samarbeid" med mange tredjeparts utviklere, at den hadde DVD-spiller, og at den ble markedsført på en måte som tilsier at man ikke har hår på pungen med mindre man kjøper en Playstation2. Oppfatninga er fortsatt slik, bare i går så jeg en fersk og seriøs kommentar: "But the Gamecube har cartoon graphics. Correct me if I'm wrong here."
Once again, that's beside the point.
Kan ikke du fylle lottokupongen min mens du er i gang? Jeg ser at PS3 kommer til selge som faen, men det gjør det ikke billigere og lettere å utvikle spilla.
Once again, that's beside the point.
Kan ikke du fylle lottokupongen min mens du er i gang? Jeg ser at PS3 kommer til selge som faen, men det gjør det ikke billigere og lettere å utvikle spilla.
Vel, jeg husker det soleklart at flere utviklere klaget på at maskinen (PS2) var vanskelig å programmere til. Og jeg tror nok andre husker det også.
Kilde: http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-520064.html
Dette er bare en av veldig mange uttalselser om PS2en og hvor vanskelig den var å arbeide med.
Samme blir det med PS3. Problemet de står ovenfor når man har 8 kjerner å forholde seg til.
De kommer til å klare det fint. De må bare lære seg å utnytte mulighetene først skikkelig.
Som du selv ser så er det de mest respekterte spillselskapene som uttaler seg og vet hva de snakker om når de sier at maskinen var meget vanskelig å lage spill til.
Å sammenlikne PS1 med PS2 er riv ruskende feil.
Kilde: http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-520064.html
Dette er bare en av veldig mange uttalselser om PS2en og hvor vanskelig den var å arbeide med.
Samme blir det med PS3. Problemet de står ovenfor når man har 8 kjerner å forholde seg til.
De kommer til å klare det fint. De må bare lære seg å utnytte mulighetene først skikkelig.
Som du selv ser så er det de mest respekterte spillselskapene som uttaler seg og vet hva de snakker om når de sier at maskinen var meget vanskelig å lage spill til.
Å sammenlikne PS1 med PS2 er riv ruskende feil.
Tror nok PS3 blir mye vanskeligere å utvikle spill for enn 360. Synes dette innlegget til Shadar var interessant lesing.
Driver du med programmering? Jeg bare lurer.
Ifølge teksten så var problemet med PS2 at Sony ikke leverte et utviklingssett. Dvs at utviklerne måtte først lage sine egne biblioteker før de kunne gå løs på spillutviklingen. Smmenlign dette med java, hvor langt hadde du kommet uten java.lang? Dette gjorde PS2 til en vegg man stoppa ved inntil man hadde verktøyet for å komme seg over og starte utviklinga på selve spillet.
Hvorvidt Sony leverer et anstendig bibliotek til PS3 vet jeg ikke, men jeg håper for guds skyld at de kommer med noe brukbart, ellers er utviklerne FUBAR. Problemet med PS3 er som du nevner at den har 8 kjerner, men det er nok et større problem enn du vil innse. Virker det som. Å få noe til å fungere på PS3 vil gå greit. Det å få de åtte kjernene til å jobbe sammen på en anstendig måte vil bli et helvete på jord.
Å sammenligne PS1 med PS2 er saklig nok i denne sammenhengen. Bortsett fra styrke og grunnleggende heftige forbedringer i grafikkortet (alt er relativt ja), er maskinene nogenlunge likt bygget opp på samme måte som en Xbox og en vanlig pc er nogenlunde likt bygget opp. Herre, Xbox var en pc for den saks skyld, folk kjøpte den for å mekke ftp-servere og det som var.
Ifølge teksten så var problemet med PS2 at Sony ikke leverte et utviklingssett. Dvs at utviklerne måtte først lage sine egne biblioteker før de kunne gå løs på spillutviklingen. Smmenlign dette med java, hvor langt hadde du kommet uten java.lang? Dette gjorde PS2 til en vegg man stoppa ved inntil man hadde verktøyet for å komme seg over og starte utviklinga på selve spillet.
Hvorvidt Sony leverer et anstendig bibliotek til PS3 vet jeg ikke, men jeg håper for guds skyld at de kommer med noe brukbart, ellers er utviklerne FUBAR. Problemet med PS3 er som du nevner at den har 8 kjerner, men det er nok et større problem enn du vil innse. Virker det som. Å få noe til å fungere på PS3 vil gå greit. Det å få de åtte kjernene til å jobbe sammen på en anstendig måte vil bli et helvete på jord.
Å sammenligne PS1 med PS2 er saklig nok i denne sammenhengen. Bortsett fra styrke og grunnleggende heftige forbedringer i grafikkortet (alt er relativt ja), er maskinene nogenlunge likt bygget opp på samme måte som en Xbox og en vanlig pc er nogenlunde likt bygget opp. Herre, Xbox var en pc for den saks skyld, folk kjøpte den for å mekke ftp-servere og det som var.
Ja det tviler jeg ikke på et sekund at den blir. Xbox var og mye lettere å lage spill til, spesielt når utviklerene kanskje var mest vant til å lage pc spill.
Alt det betyr er at utviklere må jobbe hardere for å få mest ytelse ut av maskinen til spill. Og ingenting er som en god utfordring..
At både Xbox360 og PS3 er vanskelige å programmere til er ikke noe annet enn litt yrkesmessig motvind. Før eller siden snur vinden og da har man potensialet til å suse avgårde. Ihvertfall fra et teknisk ståsted.
Og for å svare deg Buggz, nei jeg driver ikke med programmering. Men jeg tror sterkt på at både MS og Sony VET hva de driver med. Ikke tale om at de lager en maskin som utviklere bare gir opp og tar kvelden på. Alt er vanskelig første gangen.
Det blir litt som en 16åring til sengs med ei dame for første gang. Fomlete, det går kanskje ok. Men etter øvelse så kan man nesten gjøre det i blinde
Nok en edit :
Når man snakker om flere kjerner og få de til å jobbe effektivt sammen så er det ikke et must at alle kjernene jobber sammen fra dag 1. Gradvis vil man se progress i teknologien og det er nok det beste på konsoll fronten. Hvis jeg fikk et launch spill som tynet maskinen maksimalt så hadde jeg nesten blitt litt skuffet. Da hadde jeg visst at det kommer ikke til å bli stort sett bedre over tid. Og en konsoll skal nesten ha en levetid på minimum 4år.
Alt det betyr er at utviklere må jobbe hardere for å få mest ytelse ut av maskinen til spill. Og ingenting er som en god utfordring..
At både Xbox360 og PS3 er vanskelige å programmere til er ikke noe annet enn litt yrkesmessig motvind. Før eller siden snur vinden og da har man potensialet til å suse avgårde. Ihvertfall fra et teknisk ståsted.
Og for å svare deg Buggz, nei jeg driver ikke med programmering. Men jeg tror sterkt på at både MS og Sony VET hva de driver med. Ikke tale om at de lager en maskin som utviklere bare gir opp og tar kvelden på. Alt er vanskelig første gangen.
Det blir litt som en 16åring til sengs med ei dame for første gang. Fomlete, det går kanskje ok. Men etter øvelse så kan man nesten gjøre det i blinde
Nok en edit :
Når man snakker om flere kjerner og få de til å jobbe effektivt sammen så er det ikke et must at alle kjernene jobber sammen fra dag 1. Gradvis vil man se progress i teknologien og det er nok det beste på konsoll fronten. Hvis jeg fikk et launch spill som tynet maskinen maksimalt så hadde jeg nesten blitt litt skuffet. Da hadde jeg visst at det kommer ikke til å bli stort sett bedre over tid. Og en konsoll skal nesten ha en levetid på minimum 4år.
PS3 blir som PS2 vanskelig å utnytte i starten, men uansett er det penga som rår når det gjelder spillstøtte. På tross av at PS2 var et helvete å utvikle i starten, fikk den stor støtte fra selskapene takket være den enorme brukerbasen. Utviklingsverktøyene til konsollen ble etterhvert bedre, og den tekniske kvaliteten på spillene økte gradvis. Sånn blir det nok med PS3 også.
Det er alt for tidlig å si om Xbox 360 blir en suksess. Selv i Xbox-gale USA solgte til og med den døende Gamecube mer enn Xbox 360 under julesalget. Det sier vel det meste om hvor få konsoller de har fått ut på markedet...
Ellers alltid interessant med analyser fra såkalte eksperter: 360 vinner konsollkrigen, PSP vinner håndholdtkrigen
Det er alt for tidlig å si om Xbox 360 blir en suksess. Selv i Xbox-gale USA solgte til og med den døende Gamecube mer enn Xbox 360 under julesalget. Det sier vel det meste om hvor få konsoller de har fått ut på markedet...
Ellers alltid interessant med analyser fra såkalte eksperter: 360 vinner konsollkrigen, PSP vinner håndholdtkrigen