Xbox One: Building a console with the "right amount of Microsoft" thrown in

Xbox product planning boss Albert Penello tells us all about the evolution of Xbox, and how MS wasn't even thinking about Xbox One until late 2010
Microsoft

microsoft.com


When it comes to the Xbox business, Albert Penello has seen it all. Following six years in product marketing at Electronic Arts, Penello joined Microsoft's (at the time) new Xbox division in 2000, helping with marketing and product planning on the very first Xbox as well as newer iterations and critically important accessories like the Kinect (which will now be a standard for every Xbox One). Penello, therefore, has a certain perspective on the continual evolution of the Xbox platform that others simply don't have.
Following the Xbox One unveiling event this week, GamesIndustry International sat down with Penello at the Redmond campus to take a deep dive into the mindset Microsoft had going into the development of Xbox One. We were surprised to hear that Microsoft really wasn't even thinking about a successor to the Xbox 360 until five years into the system's lifecycle (quite unusual in a console business), and Penello explained that Microsoft's engineers and designers were truly looking at the Xbox One as a fresh slate. How could Microsoft continue to innovate and grab new consumers while also pleasing its existing audience? How would designers know how much of the Microsoft imprint to include in the design of the system? These questions and more are addressed in this interesting behind-the-scenes look at Microsoft's product planning.
Q: What does your title -- Senior Director of Product Planning -- entail, exactly?
The way I describe it is, I am like the Rosetta Stone between the developers and the customers and marketing team. Think about my team as trying to put all the pieces together with different features, trying to be out there early in the incubation phases of the project trying to put it all together. Who's the customer? What's the value proposition? What features are going to resonate?
Q: In terms of Xbox One, what is your role, then?
I was the planner. I was probably one of the 12 people in the very beginning, when we decided to do a next-gen console. When we finally said, "Okay, it's time," I was one of the people that got everybody together. "Okay, now we have to start writing stuff down. What are we going to do? What do we want this to be? What do we think the future is? Who's the customer?" Just got a lot of people together and kicked the project off.
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