Blazing Sword
Member
Here is excerpts of interest:
________________________________________________________________________
You're still not talking about Xbox 2 specifics: when are you going to start?
Allard: There's lots we could talk about. I could talk till next week about our next-generation plans if I wanted to. The reason we chose not to is because it's really important for retail and for the business to have a successful 2004.
And this Holiday season, talking about the next-generation Xbox, there's nothing actionable for people. All it can do is encourage consumers to wait and say 'Well I'll wait for the thing that comes out next year, I'm not really sure that I want to do something this year'. We didn't want to slow down the market momentum that we have right now, or the industry, by promising something too early.
I think that we'll be talking about it next year for sure, but I think it's going to be a very quiet 2004 in terms of next-generation plans for us. Sony, I would say, would probably have the same argument.
There's a feeling that PS3 seems to be slipping off the radar, from developers we've been talking to. People are expressing concerns over when it's going to arrive...
Allard:It's strange that they [Sony] talked about development kits at the press conference.
What they're saying about Cell is not palpable at this stage, though.
Allard:It's a very strange message. The irony is, since we went to GDC last March and I did the keynote there and announced this XNA thing... It's a developer message, and the fact that any of you guys know what XNA is or write down what XNA is and give it to gamers, it's kind of weird because it's not really a gamer message, it's not really a consumer message.
I talked about XNA for what, two minutes in the press conference? And this press conference was fun and talked about all aspects of the business area.
Sony did a business and fun presentation at GDC. They had people out on the stage doing YMCA in front of the EyeToy. It was wildly entertaining. Everybody loved it. They walked out of my presentation and they were like 'Great developer message, believe in it' blah blah, and then they walked out of the Sony one and were like, 'Boy that was fun!' [laughs].
Then they talked about development stuff at E3 with no developers in the audience and they didn't do the YMCA thing. It's very strange. I think they just got their concepts a little mixed up.
When you do think Xbox's cycle will end and how long do you foresee supporting the first one for?
Allard: I think people are going to be playing Halo 2 on Live for ten years.
How does it fit in with your next-gen planning?
Allard: The one thing that happens is the hardware will dry out. Selling new hardware at retail will dry up, then trailing that will be new games coming on the platform. I think you'll see a trail off of the best game developers; I don't think you'll see a lot of BioWare games [on Xbox 1] once the next generation of Xbox comes out, a lot of BioWare stuff or a lot of id stuff coming out on the old system. The world-class developers will obviously want to hop on board really soon. There'll be a landing path like that.
But one thing that we want to do is we want to make sure that the Live universe allows you to bridge those worlds. There may be game developers that choose to have those experiences between the two generation systems to keep community intact and so on.
I think we might have a longer life cycle... I guess what I'm trying to say is, the last day we sell a new piece of hardware to the last day a new game comes out, that window might open. Sony talks about this ten years of selling hardware - we're not going to sell Xbox 1 for ten years, no way..
There's a suggestion Sony may be saying that as it is uncertain bout when PS3 is coming out.
Allard:Well, yeah. And strategically from their point of view, if they can cement peoples' minds the next generation doesn't start until they say so, that will put enormous pressure on us to say the next generation has started. That's the game that they're playing.
But I do think what really will happen in the industry, specifically because of online, specifically because of some of the things that we'll do between the platforms and the fact that XNA allows you to bridge those two platforms more effectively, that from the last day a piece of hardware's sold at retail to the last day a new game comes out,
As I was describing with the Halo universe, if you were to design Halo 3 that way and say I want to project it on every screen it would make good sense to go and project it on Xbox one. And if you can do that for low development costs and you can have a great experience, why wouldn't you?
And what a lot of games companies are forced to do... Take Tony Hawk's 2, that came out after PS2 came out but came out on PSone. And Activision said, the way to get onto both platforms is to use the backward compatibility thing and I don't want to screw around with the franchise.
We need the franchise now, I want to make a bunch of money off of the thing, but I can't afford to let the developer go learn the new hardware to achieve it so I'm going to do that.
We're going to have a very different opportunity so I think a lot of new games will come out. I think the engagement of gamers on Xbox 1 will be much longer...
Are you looking at backwards compatibility for Xbox 2?
Allard: Of course we look at it. What most gamers tell you though that what they want is new experience. Sony will trump that up as a huge feature. That's not why Sony won this generation at all. Let's be clear, the reason that they got off to such a good start was they played DVD movies and it was cheaper than any DVD player in Japan.
That's how they sold the first million units. It wasn't even the games, and the fact that they weren't contested - there was no competition for 18 months. It gave them a great headstart.
It wasn't backwards compatibility. The one thing that it gave Sony in the early stages was that it gave them a library. They had had really crappy games for the first six months, or twelve months, as people were trying to grapple with the hardware. There was really nothing worth playing.
So, like we did with Xbox one, we're going to focus on a killer launch line-up, and I think we'll have an ever better line-up for the next-gen than we did this time. If you have that, then what do you want to play?
Would backwards-compatibility add a lot of expense to the unit cost?
Allard: Well, if nothing else, it incurs complexity, complexity and focus. And do I want to make a huge compromise there? Not if I don't have to. You've got to do what gamers want, and if they say that that's really important, we'll do it. Like DVD movie playback; that's important, we've got to do it. I don't like the fact that I've got to spend money to do it and I have to devote resources to do it, but gamers have said that's an expectation for the console - do it.
They say it, we'll do it, but we're really going to make sure we ask the questions the right way, because it is a distraction for us and our early research suggests that it's not that important, but we'll see how it goes.
Obviously you're privy to a lot of what everyone is already developing for your next-gen system; you're also building the next-generation with a certain idea of what it will be capable of. But is what you're seeing from second- and third-party developers amazing you at this stage?
Allard: There's some stuff that's just knocked my socks off. The thing that we were looking at in the next generation is just an unbelievable amount of raw computing power. And the architecture that will go down will be much less specialised. Right now hardware's very specialised, you've got your audio chip and your graphics chip and your CPU - you're constantly trying to figure out the balances.
Next generation we're going to have so much silicon, so much raw computing horsepower, that developers are going to be able to use that computing horsepower in interesting and exciting ways. I've seen demos of terrain and worlds that have no textures in them whatsoever and no geometry - it's just a program. It's just a program that's creating a scene for you.
And I think the notion of what I call procedural synthesis, where art is the highest cost component of game development, and so much of the art is really repetitive and really intensive, and then doesn't come out to be very realistic.
You know, bricks in a wall - very repeated textures. Let's go write the brick program and run the brick program to make a room full of bricks, lose the art expense and gain a more realistic looking room, because now we can focus on having the bricks there in a really realistic way. I get really excited about that kind of stuff.
There's a lot of new techniques, like what shaders have done for 3D, there are a lot of new next-generation techniques for procedural synthesis that's really going to change how game construction is done, but also what the environment looks like so it feels a lot less 'cookie cutter' [i.e. repetitive].
High definition too. Next year's show, 16:9 high definition everywhere. I promise you. It's going to be cool. From the consumers point of view high definition gaming I think is the next quantum.
_____________________________________________________________
source: computerandvideogames.com
________________________________________________________________________
You're still not talking about Xbox 2 specifics: when are you going to start?
Allard: There's lots we could talk about. I could talk till next week about our next-generation plans if I wanted to. The reason we chose not to is because it's really important for retail and for the business to have a successful 2004.
And this Holiday season, talking about the next-generation Xbox, there's nothing actionable for people. All it can do is encourage consumers to wait and say 'Well I'll wait for the thing that comes out next year, I'm not really sure that I want to do something this year'. We didn't want to slow down the market momentum that we have right now, or the industry, by promising something too early.
I think that we'll be talking about it next year for sure, but I think it's going to be a very quiet 2004 in terms of next-generation plans for us. Sony, I would say, would probably have the same argument.
There's a feeling that PS3 seems to be slipping off the radar, from developers we've been talking to. People are expressing concerns over when it's going to arrive...
Allard:It's strange that they [Sony] talked about development kits at the press conference.
What they're saying about Cell is not palpable at this stage, though.
Allard:It's a very strange message. The irony is, since we went to GDC last March and I did the keynote there and announced this XNA thing... It's a developer message, and the fact that any of you guys know what XNA is or write down what XNA is and give it to gamers, it's kind of weird because it's not really a gamer message, it's not really a consumer message.
I talked about XNA for what, two minutes in the press conference? And this press conference was fun and talked about all aspects of the business area.
Sony did a business and fun presentation at GDC. They had people out on the stage doing YMCA in front of the EyeToy. It was wildly entertaining. Everybody loved it. They walked out of my presentation and they were like 'Great developer message, believe in it' blah blah, and then they walked out of the Sony one and were like, 'Boy that was fun!' [laughs].
Then they talked about development stuff at E3 with no developers in the audience and they didn't do the YMCA thing. It's very strange. I think they just got their concepts a little mixed up.
When you do think Xbox's cycle will end and how long do you foresee supporting the first one for?
Allard: I think people are going to be playing Halo 2 on Live for ten years.
How does it fit in with your next-gen planning?
Allard: The one thing that happens is the hardware will dry out. Selling new hardware at retail will dry up, then trailing that will be new games coming on the platform. I think you'll see a trail off of the best game developers; I don't think you'll see a lot of BioWare games [on Xbox 1] once the next generation of Xbox comes out, a lot of BioWare stuff or a lot of id stuff coming out on the old system. The world-class developers will obviously want to hop on board really soon. There'll be a landing path like that.
But one thing that we want to do is we want to make sure that the Live universe allows you to bridge those worlds. There may be game developers that choose to have those experiences between the two generation systems to keep community intact and so on.
I think we might have a longer life cycle... I guess what I'm trying to say is, the last day we sell a new piece of hardware to the last day a new game comes out, that window might open. Sony talks about this ten years of selling hardware - we're not going to sell Xbox 1 for ten years, no way..
There's a suggestion Sony may be saying that as it is uncertain bout when PS3 is coming out.
Allard:Well, yeah. And strategically from their point of view, if they can cement peoples' minds the next generation doesn't start until they say so, that will put enormous pressure on us to say the next generation has started. That's the game that they're playing.
But I do think what really will happen in the industry, specifically because of online, specifically because of some of the things that we'll do between the platforms and the fact that XNA allows you to bridge those two platforms more effectively, that from the last day a piece of hardware's sold at retail to the last day a new game comes out,
As I was describing with the Halo universe, if you were to design Halo 3 that way and say I want to project it on every screen it would make good sense to go and project it on Xbox one. And if you can do that for low development costs and you can have a great experience, why wouldn't you?
And what a lot of games companies are forced to do... Take Tony Hawk's 2, that came out after PS2 came out but came out on PSone. And Activision said, the way to get onto both platforms is to use the backward compatibility thing and I don't want to screw around with the franchise.
We need the franchise now, I want to make a bunch of money off of the thing, but I can't afford to let the developer go learn the new hardware to achieve it so I'm going to do that.
We're going to have a very different opportunity so I think a lot of new games will come out. I think the engagement of gamers on Xbox 1 will be much longer...
Are you looking at backwards compatibility for Xbox 2?
Allard: Of course we look at it. What most gamers tell you though that what they want is new experience. Sony will trump that up as a huge feature. That's not why Sony won this generation at all. Let's be clear, the reason that they got off to such a good start was they played DVD movies and it was cheaper than any DVD player in Japan.
That's how they sold the first million units. It wasn't even the games, and the fact that they weren't contested - there was no competition for 18 months. It gave them a great headstart.
It wasn't backwards compatibility. The one thing that it gave Sony in the early stages was that it gave them a library. They had had really crappy games for the first six months, or twelve months, as people were trying to grapple with the hardware. There was really nothing worth playing.
So, like we did with Xbox one, we're going to focus on a killer launch line-up, and I think we'll have an ever better line-up for the next-gen than we did this time. If you have that, then what do you want to play?
Would backwards-compatibility add a lot of expense to the unit cost?
Allard: Well, if nothing else, it incurs complexity, complexity and focus. And do I want to make a huge compromise there? Not if I don't have to. You've got to do what gamers want, and if they say that that's really important, we'll do it. Like DVD movie playback; that's important, we've got to do it. I don't like the fact that I've got to spend money to do it and I have to devote resources to do it, but gamers have said that's an expectation for the console - do it.
They say it, we'll do it, but we're really going to make sure we ask the questions the right way, because it is a distraction for us and our early research suggests that it's not that important, but we'll see how it goes.
Obviously you're privy to a lot of what everyone is already developing for your next-gen system; you're also building the next-generation with a certain idea of what it will be capable of. But is what you're seeing from second- and third-party developers amazing you at this stage?
Allard: There's some stuff that's just knocked my socks off. The thing that we were looking at in the next generation is just an unbelievable amount of raw computing power. And the architecture that will go down will be much less specialised. Right now hardware's very specialised, you've got your audio chip and your graphics chip and your CPU - you're constantly trying to figure out the balances.
Next generation we're going to have so much silicon, so much raw computing horsepower, that developers are going to be able to use that computing horsepower in interesting and exciting ways. I've seen demos of terrain and worlds that have no textures in them whatsoever and no geometry - it's just a program. It's just a program that's creating a scene for you.
And I think the notion of what I call procedural synthesis, where art is the highest cost component of game development, and so much of the art is really repetitive and really intensive, and then doesn't come out to be very realistic.
You know, bricks in a wall - very repeated textures. Let's go write the brick program and run the brick program to make a room full of bricks, lose the art expense and gain a more realistic looking room, because now we can focus on having the bricks there in a really realistic way. I get really excited about that kind of stuff.
There's a lot of new techniques, like what shaders have done for 3D, there are a lot of new next-generation techniques for procedural synthesis that's really going to change how game construction is done, but also what the environment looks like so it feels a lot less 'cookie cutter' [i.e. repetitive].
High definition too. Next year's show, 16:9 high definition everywhere. I promise you. It's going to be cool. From the consumers point of view high definition gaming I think is the next quantum.
_____________________________________________________________
source: computerandvideogames.com
