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Peter Moore Talks PS3, Wii, Portable 360
kukyfrope writes "Peter Moore recently led an intimate round-table discussion at E3 where journalists were allowed to pluck his brain on current industry issues. His comments cover PS3's high-price announcement, downplay rumors surrounding a portable Xbox, and actually admits he would like a Wii! 'Look, it's not partisan; I love what Nintendo is doing. They're in a different space.'"
Peter Moore (Born 1956 in Liverpool, England) is the head of Microsoft's Interactive Entertainment Business division, which includes the Xbox and Xbox 360 game consoles.
Moore holds a bachelor's degree from Keele University, England, and a master's degree from California State University, Long Beach.
After working for Patrick USA, the U.S. subsidiary of the popular French sportswear company, and then Reebok, Peter Moore rose to prominence at Sega, being a heavy figure in the company's North American operations during the Dreamcast era. Moore played a pivotal role in the company's decision to change its business strategy to become a platform-agnostic software publisher. At the time of leaving Moore was president and COO of SEGA of America.
Microsoft hired Moore in 2003 to join the Xbox project, where he has been ever since.
Peter Moore has shown off his Halo 2 and Grand Theft Auto 4 tattoos when announcing the games. Both tattoos are quite real as shown in a GearLive interview.
Peter Moore wouldn't be saying all of these positive things about the Wii if he wasn't scared to death of what it could do to Xbox 360 sales.
The Wii could conceivably cost half as much as the 360 Premium Package, and Nintendo has announced a Wii title in nearly all (or maybe all?) of its major franchises. If I were Peter Moore, I'd be scared too.
Moore's trying to create a "Wii + 360 > PS3" equation in people's minds, and I'm not saying he's wrong, but I don't think that he'd be saying anything positive about Nintendo or the Wii if he thought that the Xbox 360 could become the #1 new console in its own right.
After this year's E3, I've decided that I'll be purchasing a Wii in 2007 when a lot of the non-launch games have come out, and that I just don't care about what the 360 has to offer for the amount of money I have to spend on one, especially since I can already do all of that media center stuff on my PC. There you have it--Microsoft lost at least one potential 360 customer (myself) after E3 2006. How many more people must be out there that have feelings similar to my own?
People like me are the reason Peter Moore is complementing the Wii. He wants me, and everybody like me, to get the 360 by creating the illusion that there's a copasetic relationship between the Wii and 360 just because they're not made by Sony. However, just because I can get a Wii and 360 for roughly the price of a PS3 doesn't mean that I should buy an entire other console just because I haven't blown $600 on hardware.
Some people are saying that Nintendo isn't trying to compete with MS and Sony since they've taken such a different approach to their new console, but honestly, I think that Nintendo has become more competitive than ever. The Wii is small, backwards-compatible, online-ready, much cheaper than the 360 and PS3, and most importantly, it's unique and inspired. Hats off to Nintendo for truly bringing a revolution to console gaming.