INTERVIEW: PHIL HARRISON, MICROSOFT “
The industry –the journalists and the media –are voting our games as the strongest titles.
Phil Harrison, Xbox
Do you foresee a time where an Xbox no longer needs a disc drive? It’s hard to say. It really depends on where you live. It’s my favourite William Gibson quote: ‘The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed.’ If you go to South Korea, the market is entirely digital. The infrastructure that they have with broadband is so powerful that there is no physical retail distribution of games. It is going to be a slow evolution, not a revolution.
Are the new Steam machines a threat to Xbox One?
I don't think it's a threat. I have great admiration for Valve. It has done some really smart things. The Steam platform for one. They're based close to our HQ in Seattle. We have a good relationship with it. We think the Xbox One business model, developer ecosystem and retail support, will make our platform very successful. It is unclear to me, until I see Valve’s product and understand all of their announcements, exactly what they are doing.
Valve said ‘entertainment is not a one-size-fits-all world’. But you are launching just that, an ‘all-in- one’ entertainment console. What do you make of that comment? Xbox has launched multiple console SKUs before for different audiences. Why not now? In the past you’ve seen different flavours of Xbox 360 with different hard-drive sizes. But the fundamental performance of the machine remains a constant. All the games work and the user experience is basically the same. The one thing that is exciting about the Steam announcement is that it demonstrates clearly that the centre of gravity for the most exciting game experiences is the living room. The biggest screen in the house connected to a sound system is the place where you are going to get the most amazing games. So in that way we are aligned.
Titanfall will be a ‘big, big system seller’ for Xbox One, predicts Phil Harrison
www.mcvuk.com
Xbox One has had to endure some negative PR and you’ve had to change your strategy. Have you had to increase your marketing or PR to offset these setbacks? We are very fortunate as an industry that we have passionate fans who give us feedback. I love
that because it keeps us relevant. I absolutely believe it was the right decision to adjust our plans, but it doesn’t change the fundamental direction which we are heading in. The most important thing is the games. And coming out of E3, we had almost twice as many ‘game of the show’ nominations than our nearest competitor. So the industry – the journalists – are voting our games as the strongest titles. We have an exclusive relationship with EA and Respawn on Titanfall, which is the most heralded game in the history of E3.
Then we built on that at Gamescom, where we had a fantastic reaction to putting hardware into people’s hands and letting them play. And that has been backed up by an unprecedented level of pre-orders.
You’ve mentioned Titanfall a lot in your interviews. Do you view that as the big Xbox One system seller? I had a chance to get in front of the game at Gamescom, and there is a really incredible thing that Respawn has done, where you play as the pilot – the soldier running around – and then you can scooped up and put inside a Titan. The verticality and change in level design from six- foot tall to 24-foot tall is inspired, it is a magical video game moment. It’s something impactful that I’ve never seen before. So I am very confident that this is going to be a big, big system seller. Every generation sees a new IP explode in a powerful way, and right now I would say Titanfall has a big chance.
You mentioned GTA V on stage at Eurgamer Expo and the incredible success that has had…
We should be all celebrating it. We should be cheering from the rafters.
Do you think the next-generation will ever see a game that reaches those heights?
We have seen in every single generation, speculation that we have hit the heights, that we have hit the maximum saturation and we can’t get any bigger. I have seen consoles in four different decades, the ‘80s, ‘90s, noughties and this decade. And every time we have felt that’s as big as it’s going to get and yet we always manage to out- perform and out-amaze ourselves.
October 11th 2013 19
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68