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J. Allard Responds to Hard Drive Criticism

Posted by Zonk on from the we're-right-how-dare-you-suggest-otherwise dept.

Edge Online is reporting on responses Xbox 360 platform chief J. Allard gave in response to questions regarding the hard drive on the Xbox 360. From the article: "I don't know who we've let down. There isn't a game on 360 that you can't play without a hard drive, so I think that's a good thing for consumers. We've made a commitment to broadening the audience, and while I think most of our energy here at X05 is about the hardcore, over time we're really setting the stage for making this a bigger category for everybody. So from the developer point of view you have the best tools and the commitment of the most well-resourced company in the world going worldwide with this product and saying that we want to grow the audience. So that seems like a win for developers - I'm not sure who's supposed to be disappointed."

2 of 165 comments (clear)

  1. Guess he doesn't know his own product... by Utoxin · · Score: 5, Informative

    Heh. He lies in that statement. Flat out.

    Quote: "I don't know who we've let down. There isn't a game on 360 that you can't play without a hard drive, so I think that's a good thing for consumers."

    I can name it right now: FFXI. It /will/ require a harddrive to play.

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  2. So, which is it???? by neura · · Score: 5, Informative

    From the article:

    "I'm not sure who's supposed to be disappointed." -- The unknowing customers you're screwing over by forcing developers to not take advantage of the hardrive for fear of screwing their customers over and the developers who can no longer use the HDD for caching, etc. etc. (listed later)

    "Are there developers who are disappointed? Yeah, sure." -- Did he not just say he wasn't sure who was supposed to be disappointed?

    "I was the biggest fan of the hard drive and its potential, but the problem is that we sold 22million Xbox consoles and 5million, maybe 10million just don't care about it." -- Maybe they didn't even know it was being used in games they were playing, used for caching, storing huge save games that would require an entire memory card, used for map updates, used for patches to the game itself, etc.

    "We can either ask the gamer to pay for it, pay for it ourselves, or prove that there's enough value in it and have the gamer say 'I want to pay for it' - I think that's the right model." -- again just completely missing the point, it creates a situation where developers have to make a choice to support it or not, piss off the customers that don't have one or not, etc.

    "A lot of people have said: 'This is really confusing - you have different configurations and blah, blah, blah', and I'm like: what consumer electronics business in the world has three manufacturers, three brands that each make one thing that doesn't change for seven years?" -- that should be pretty damn obvious, it's the consumer electronics business that YOU are in...