Chris Satchell
Chris Satchell: Well, that was the total number of games in the Xbox catalogue. I think we will get... I don't think it's going to take long to get to that number, but we will have a lot of games.
SPOnG: Do you see those as conflicting strategies? On the one hand, you're looking to streamline Xbox Live Arcade, on the other you're hoping to get loads of content up on the community side.
Chris Satchell: No, I think it's really consistent. Each has a different role. With Xbox Live Arcade, you're really looking at premium content and a great experience. I think what people want to be able to do there is very quickly see what are the best games, see what's hot right now. Whereas, I think with the community side it's more about digging in to find cool games or having them recommended by a friend doing some searching.
So, I think it's two different models of discovering content.
SPOnG: What about the ratings? You've said it's going to be peer rated, and that PEGI and the BBFC can't look at them all.
Chris Satchell: They're not really set up to do it at the moment, because just the sheer volume of them...
SPOnG: Are there any concerns that by allowing it to be peer-based you're not going to be covering your bases legally?
Chris Satchell: No. I mean, the content will come through just like... actually, it will be un-rated as far as PEGI or (the) BBFC as far as they're concerned. So, it will completely interact with parental settings. If you set up a child account and you say, 'I want to set it to nothing more than a Tor a PG it will respect that and the games won't play. Assuming you've left it open I think it's all about, at that point, allowing people to make an informed choice. So that's what the community ratings are about. 'Can I make an informed choice about this game, because the creator has said (it comes) with this level of sex, this level of violence which may be nothing, it may be a little bit, it may be lots, but I know what I'm getting into'.
So, I'm not worried about the legal side of it... I should be clearer. We've put a lot of effort in to make sure that we're going to be compliant with the rules, and we've made sure that we really respect the family settings, just like everything else on Xbox. But, I think it's really about letting people make an informed choice, and we're finding a good way to do that in a world where there's not only lots of games, but I think people will do lots of versions of their game as they get community feedback.
SPOnG: One thing you mentioned in your presentation was the importance of portable gaming. I thought it was interesting that you showed a couple of XNA games running on the Zune. Is Microsoft seeing the Zune as the focus of a handheld strategy for the Zune at the moment?
Chris Satchell: Not at the moment. It's more about, 'is there another good platform that we have to allow people to be creative?' And that's really what we've done with Zune. We've kind of done what we did before, (with) 'let's launch the development environment first, and let the community be creative'. The RPG game I showed off, it's really cool, and that's something somebody had done in the last few weeks. So, it's not trying to be a big handheld strategy, it's trying to say 'hey, this is another good Microsoft platform, it's a really cool gaming device as it turns out, with the touch pad and the great screen and processing. Let's enable it for developers, and see what creativity we spur, rather than saying 'we've got a big mobile gaming strategy and this is the core of it.'
You will see XNA spread to more mobile platforms, but think about more like smartphones, things like that, versus Zune being our one stop for mobile gaming.