Q&As// Halo 3 Hands On And Q&A

SPOnG: Do you think it introduced a lot of people to first-person shooters?

Phil Spencer: I think one of our studios, Rare, might have something to say about that with GoldenEye. Halo was a little bit right place right time, with the dual analogue sticks, it was there at launch, and the little jack on the back of the Xbox that let you plug two together.

This fed itself – whenever I took my Xbox over to my friend’s house, five of us would have Xboxes and other three didn’t – until the next week, when the other three had seen the experience that we were having, and wanted to plug their Xboxes in. So, it was kind of viral, because of that multiplayer experience. And who doesn’t want to be Master Chief?

SPOnG: What can you tell us about Halo 3’s storyline?

Phil Spencer: You’re going to have to play it. I don’t think people want to know. They want to know about the tools with which they’re going to create their single-player story. The single-player campaign finishes very well in Halo 3 – as reviews will show. I’m confident this is the best Halo game we’ve ever built.

SPOnG: Do you feel that Halo 3 uses a significant percentage of the Xbox 360’s under-the-bonnet power?

Phil Spencer: It’s one of the first things we did with the 360. Obviously, our launch first-person shooter was Perfect Dark Zero, then the following year, we came out with Gears of War, which looks beautiful.

But if you know Gears, you can see how we made it look like that – you don’t see environments like you see in Halo. You saw the multi-player level – that’s the largest multi-player level we’ve ever built. It seems like a single-player level, it’s that big, and you have these huge tanks moving around – that’s the power we have in the box. Waiting and getting it right – we weren’t there at launch, and we weren’t there that first big holiday – that allowed us to get the power out of the Xbox 360.

SPOnG: Thanks for your time.


Don't Forget To Check Out Our Halo 3 Preview From Earlier This Year As Well!