Moore Dissects State Of The Xbox

Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing to the C+VG article interviewing Peter Moore, Xbox VP and former Sega of America boss. This long, detailed, and intriguing interview covers a lot of interesting ground, such as Microsoft's online service versus Sony's ("Do they [Sony] have a service? Don't they just sell adaptors?"), the longer-term strategy of buying developers Rare ("If I thought by acquiring Rare we'd make all the money back in 12 months, that wouldn't be right"), and even a little more detail about why Microsoft aren't getting into portable gaming right now ("..we believe that the future is the social element of gaming, and that's going to be done through a console, not through a handheld gaming device.")

Comments

How did Sony win the console war?

[cloudless.net]

- The Playstation was significantly better than the SNES.
- Sony signed with many game developers. Many good titles were released early with the console. BTW Final Fantasy VII was the deciding factor for my PS purchase.
- Sony's marketing and brand recognition.

The Xbox has better hardware than the PS2, however not significantly, at least not in the average users point of view. Although Microsoft spent a lot of money to buy some developers, it is still not getting enough good games. I think the key to Xbox's success would be online gaming, however I think the market is still not enough to make it profitable yet.

Re:How did Sony win the console war?

[djNocturne]

Good point, but online gaming in the console market is finally starting to pick up steam, and will eventually become incredibly profitable. The real question is, for whom? The problem M$ will forever have in winning over online gamers, and the very reason I'm not the least bit concerned about that eventuality, was summarized quite nicely by the man himself:

"Do they [Sony] have a service? Don't they just sell adaptors?"

Once again, in Microsoft's alternate reality, a technology system only achieves a full state of Nirvana once it is controlled front-to-back by a single company. Hmmm ... let's see ... when I decide to pay for online gaming, do I want the money should go to, a) the console manufacturer, or b) the publisher and/or development company that worked hard to produce the game in the first place? Also, when some bored little teenage malcontent decides to DoS the gaming network using tools some clever jackass wrote and posted online, or do I want it to, a) take out the entire networking capabilities for every online-compatible game I own, or b) the specific network of a single publisher?

Isn't Microsoft that the same company that had both their primary and secondary DNS records on the same Class C at one point? Yeah, I trust them to competently administer a monolithic online console network single-handedly.

The entire issue of the M$ vs. Sony online architectures can be summarized thusly:

M$ alone controls the "Xbox Live" gate. If a publisher wants to add online capabilities into their game, M$ alone will decide how many, or how few, table scraps to throw them from the table of proceeds. They alone will also decide how much you, the gamer, are going to pay them for the privilege of having only one game-network option when you plug an ethernet cable into your XBox. As with anything M$, "ease-of-use" and "reliability" are the primary reasons given for why we should all bow down to a single network.

As this shill correctly points out, Sony just sells an adaptor. That's all. Just the hardware that you need to connect. The gaming servers themselves are independent of Sony Corp. (Actually, they will probably run the networks for their own in-house titles ... but then again, so can anyone else.)

Is a system where you simply plug in a cat5 cable, run a little on-screen config form, and then just start sending M$ money the ultimate in ease-of-use? Sure it is ... in the same way that Windoze XP is easier for my grandmother to run than Linux. But unless my grandma plans on booting up Halo 2 and dumping a 20-gallon drum w00t-ass on you---and if she is, she certainly hasn't mentioned it to me---then I guess I fail to see a market clammoring for dumbed-down simplicity at the expense of choice and some measure of flexibility.

I, for one, would actually love to see the Xbox continue down this path. It'll send most of the serious gamers (and, by extension, games) over to the online-capable console I actually do own. I'd therefore like to send a shout out to the entire Xbox division. Keep on doing what you do, baby!