Interviews// Peter Moore: The Exclusive and Essential Interview: Part One

SPOnG: Do you see the Xbox as a spiritual successor to the Dreamcast? It certainly set out to achieve a lot of the same things...

Peter Moore: Personally, yes. I always talk to Robbie about passing the baton. Dreamcast had the dream of online play though the big difference is Microsoft has the financial wherewithal to challenge the number one company at that time and to really take on the dream of online gaming and to bring global communities together. Dreamcast was dial-up. Okay, there was a latter-day broadband adapter launched, but still... I think at one point we got up to 50,000 uniques that were on SegaNet, as it was called at the time.

SPOnG: Ed Fries left the Xbox team about 18 months ago. The last time we saw him on official business was at X03 and he had been pushed into an evangelist role - something he didn't seem to comfortable with. What were the reasons for his departure and was it anything to do with the performance of Rare?

Peter Moore: No, not at all. When Ed left he had 17 years under his belt, he came straight out of college and I don't remember him taking about any other job. When he was at X03, and to the day he left, he ran MGS, that was his job. And Ed would have to give his own comment on this, but he left under his own volition, to do other things. He also had just fathered his second child and I think his priorities changed. The fact that he had the ability to choose what he wanted to do, especially when he had young children...well, I think your life changes. And I should say that I saw Ed recently and I can say that I've never seen a happier man in my life.

SPOnG: How do you think Rare has performed?

Peter Moore: The philosophy behind the acquisition of Rare was that it was an acquisition for the future and one thing Microsoft does very well is to think five and ten years ahead. We have the luxury of doing that because we don't have to worry about our results every quarter, we don't have to worry about not meeting the numbers that the shareholders are looking for. We are very fortunate as we have the wherewithal to make very large bets over long periods of time. We are evolving away from what we were maybe a decade ago, being totally focused on the workplace and developing tools for the information worker - the guy who sits at his desk and needs a strong operating system and applications, into an entertainment-driven company. When we looked at where we needed to be in the future...I mean, we were already developing Xbox 360 even before Rare was acquired and when we looked at where we needed help within our portfolio, we realised that having the ability to bring in a world class developer that has shown expertise unlike any other in what we'll call broader appealing titles. Of course, Grabbed by the Ghoulies was released and Conkers has just shipped, and if you've played multiplayer, you'll know that that is where it's at. Although there was a very weird review on Eurogamer last week which made me wonder if they had played the same game as I had. It was a four out of ten and I was going, 'Hmm, that's just not right.' They were the only one. Everything else was in the eights and nines...

I was at Rare three or four weeks ago for meetings and had a look at Perfect Dark Zero. We're very excited about that and we’ve deliberately kept this thing under wraps.

SPOnG: What happened with Those Screenshots that were released?

Peter Moore: These screens were actually given to EGM with approvals, but in retrospect we should have put more context around them prior to releasing. So the screenshots had no context around them. I'm thinking first of all of the one with the skeletal form... You look at that and think, 'What the hell is that!?' But what you have to do is go through the demo and really see it. It's not the sort of game from which you can release screenshots. If you take Gears of War you can just see the Berserker creature or Marcus Phoenix and that works. But PDZ is a far more intense game - about a lot of people being able to play in the Xbox Live environment and there's nothing you can do in 30 seconds that shows off the game. As with children, they need nurturing and bringing along and then exposing to the outside world. I was at Rare and spent three hours with the PDZ team - I was just blown away. Same with Kameo. People look at Kameo and just don't get it. So I talk about the broadening of what we're doing and the investment in Rare. Both Perfect Dark and Kameo are games that we held back for Xbox 360...when you see them in 720p, when you hear the surround sound - I saw the latest builds and they are just gorgeous.

SPOnG: They are both on track for launch?

Peter Moore: Yes. The launch window

SPOnG: Which is what, exactly?

Peter Moore: Holiday. Christmas.

SPOnG: So what is this launch window? Any dates or specifics?

Peter Moore: Well, we haven't announced any dates, but clearly as we get closer we'll be doing that. But if we take the holiday period in the US, anything from Thanksgiving to New Year's, that's when people are in the shops and that's when we'll be there. What we have said is that Europe, North America and Japan, and that's no mean undertaking, will all launch this holiday. That is a logistical Behemoth of a task, bringing not only the hardware around the world, which is localised, but also the software enough to have a compelling line-up of games all around the world and getting the marketing all done and localised and getting ready to really blow this thing out.

SPOnG: How many games do you expect for launch?

Peter Moore: Well you know, it's really tough to say. But my experience tells me that it will be somewhere between...well, as little as 10 and many as 15 or 16 seems to be where it's at. The key is to make a strategic decision - do you have the genres covered? Sports games, fighting games, racing games - do you have them all covered? The three we should talk about, and that we are focusing on from a first-party point of view are Kameo and Perfect Dark from Rare, and Project Gotham Racing 3 from Bizarre. But it's difficult to say. Even now as we continue to evolve and see stuff every day, these are the launch titles and this is how many there'll be and this is when we'll be ready in the US and then Europe and then Japan. And this undertaking, in spite of what some of our competitors may say about the importance of Europe...I mean, I made a speech at the ELSPA summit recently about the importance of Europe and the European market. We believe that it is a swing territory in the next-generation. We've done okay there with Xbox and we know what we need to do to perform a lot better. So our launch shows respect to Europe and shows what we need to do in launching in Japan before the holiday as well, because obviously we have a different set of problems in the Japanese market.

SPOnG: Any idea of hardware shipment figures?

Peter Moore: No. Do we have a plan? Absolutely. But until the silicon is flowing in quantities, until we understand our manufacturing yields, it's a plan.

SPOnG: Has production started already?

Peter Moore: No. We're going to announce that in the coming weeks. We believe it's a monumental moment.

SPOnG: Where is 360 being made?

Peter Moore: China. It's a massive job. When you understand the complexity of what goes into that little box there, how many components, how many suppliers, the amount of testing those lines...we're getting close...

SPOnG: Does Xbox production continue to this day?

Peter Moore: We believe that this Christmas will be the best ever Christmas for Xbox. It continues to do incredibly well. We're tracking somewhere between 150 and 200 games for the Xbox and what we have said to the outside world is that we expect to be selling games for it right the way through until 2007. There's a lot of people with the Xbox. 21.9 million, and it continues to expand and there's a lot of great games coming out for it so we're still very bullish on its future. And that's an important point. As excited as we are about Xbox 360, let's not forget that we built this incredible thing in Xbox, and now we find ourselves talking to two different sets of consumers. There's the guy who bought his Xbox on day one, who will again be sleeping on the sidewalk the night before launch so he's first in line at the store, and there's the guy who's just coming into Xbox right now. The price is right, there's a ton of games and for whatever reason he's been a little slow. Or, he could have been a PlayStation 2 gamer who decided he needed to see what all the fuss is about.

SPOnG: So hardware manufacture will continue?

Peter Moore: Yeah, we're continuing. What people get confused about is they don't understand our inventory situation, where we are with componentry, chips...it's not as simple as saying "We'll, if they're not rolling off the line anymore, then it's out." I couldn't tell you the exact figure, but we're still flowing. Retail is placing its order for Christmas as we speak and the game line-up is huge, so there's nothing to worry about for the consumer who wants to buy Xbox this Christmas or into 2006.

[I]This is only the first half of the transcription of SPOnG's essential and exclusive discussion with Peter Moore. Check back next Monday for the second half, when things really heat up. SPOnG is dedicated to bringing you the best coverage from the highest levels in the games industry on all the subjects that matter, every working day.[/I]

Correction - We were contacted by Microsoft with a correction to the Peter Moore interview. The "Perfect Dark Zero" shots supplied to EGM were taken by Rare and ultimately approved by both Rare and Microsoft.

EGM had no say in what screen shots were provided.