Via
Engadget
This morning, Vlad Cole and I had an opportunity to chat with Microsoft's Peter Moore, the man responsible for marketing the Xbox 360. When we last pinned him down at CES, there were still so many unanswered questions about the competition. After Sony and Nintendo's keynotes at E3, not to mention their own, the time was ripe to ask him about a portable Xbox, the Nintendo Wii complementing the Xbox 360, the Sony Dual Shake controller, and where he got that ink on his arm.
Forgive me if I interrupt you, if I hear something that I already heard at the press briefing, I might cut your answer short a little bit. Congratulations on Gears of War. Everyone is saying it looks and plays awesome. It actually appears to be head and shoulders above everything we're seeing on the show floor. Is that a conscious choice to keep it off the floor itself, so that the comparison gap doesn't pop?
No, not really. I think the idea is that the game deserves hands-on. We're trying to show it to as many people as we can up here. The team at Epic is really so conscious of the quality of what they're doing and presenting that bringing them up here, we'll get thousands of people through in the end, they churn people through pretty quickly, there was no conscious effort, no.
So where are the rest of the games that look this good?
Here? That depends on your ... you tell me. What is it that you think is missing?
There does appear to be a gap in quality between that and everything else. It's just head and shoulders above. We're wondering if there are other titles that will match that by the time they come out.
Quality of gameplay, graphics, depth, immersion? It's all subjective. I'm biased on all of them. Games like Crackdown: different visual style, different genre. But, it's coming together really well. Mass Effect. I was on some blogs last night where people are spending some time on it and are really impressed with it. Dave Perry and a few other people wrote some really strong stories about Mass Effect. That's a weird question ... I mean, which of my children do I love more?
Where's J Allard?
J was just, umm. J was doing a BMX event or something. I don't know. He's back in Redmond now.
It's just that he's been MIA since launch.
J's working hard. J runs the platform. J has his engineers. He's been working hard on Live updates and what have you. Live as a platform is something something to J.
It's just that the difference from pre-launch, where we saw him in the ourcolony video. He was the face of the Xbox 360.
Remember, you were there Tuesday right? I started off saying we had an organizational change. I run the business from the point of view what people have to do. One thing it means is a singular face. One thing we figured out was that the J/Robbie/Peter thing probably wasn't working. J's incredibly busy. J is one of smartest guys on the face of the Earth, and developing platforms is what he does. From that point of view ... I don't know. J's a very active young man and ... snowboarding season's over.
There's a rumor that he's maybe working on the Xboy, a portable Xbox.
I think J was actually on the grassy-knoll in '63 in Dallas.
Was he also responsible for hiding all those Xboxes at Area 51?
He actually hid the E.T. cartridges, that's how far back he goes.
If you're really serious about the whole games thing, don't you think portable's a part of that?
Portable's a part of everything, but there's a billion cell phones now that I don't think that in any way our industry is doing a fine job of exploiting what's possible on mobile phones. We're blind to the fact that everyone will carry one of these devices. It h as have input, it has a screen. Anything that has input, has a screen, you can play games.
What do you think of Nokia's new N-Gage push? I don't think they're blind to it.
I have to admire them for persistency. I have not walked the show floor.
Do you think that persistence can get them developer support the same way that you've said persistence in Japan will earn you developer support?
Nokia's an unbelievable company. They remind us a little bit of Microsoft: they stick to things they believe in it. They have the capital resources and software engineers to get stuff done. Maybe later on today I'll go have a look. My priorities are to go talk with three or four partners, maybe go play with the Wii, and get on a flight home.
To hammer this one more time: do you really think that the cell phone itself can compete against the likes of the DS and the PSP?
The cell phone at its current structure... as they evolve now. [Pulls phone out.] This is a smart phone from HTC. You start getting this level of functionality -- you know the deal -- you've got the same thing. You've got 16 by 9 aspect ratios, you've got pretty decent screens, I look at this and I think, "geez, you could probably get things on the capability of Genesis or the old days on this pretty well. I will never be able to play things like this. I just can't do it. I also prefer to use the soft key pad because I can go faster with the stylus. But yeah -- the Chairman said so. The Chairman says so, believe me. I haven't been at Microsoft long, but I know when the Chairman says so, things happen.
Services as ambitious as Live Anywhere have to be rolled out over a number of years. You're not going to get that all at once.
That's right.
So what are we going to see when Vista launches
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