Xbox - Past, Present, And Future

Thanks to EGM for their interview with Microsoft's Ed Fries, discussing the state of the Xbox. He talks about the specialization of Microsoft's first-party Xbox publishing efforts, saying: "When we were starting, not only were we learning about how to be a console publisher, but we were also trying to make sure we had games in every genre because we really didn't know what kind of third-party support we were gonna get." Fries also quibbles with Nintendo's lack of voice acting in their games, mentioning: "someone asked [Miyamoto and Iwata] why none of their games had voices. And they talked about cost and the time and trouble to localize it... and I just felt like I was listening to silent-movie directors talking [about how films work fine without sound]", and arguing: "I feel like that's just part of the price of doing business nowadays, and it's something everyone should be doing."

Voices not always needed

[Echo5ive]

Nintendo has quite a lot of niche games like Zelda and Metroid -- neither of these has any voiceovers (apart from a few sentences in the intro to Metroid Prime), and they work just fine without them.

Many would probably think that Zelda was just plain wrong if it had voices. Zelda has such a long history that you've made yourself a picture of Link in your mind, and a voice would disturb that picture. The Wind Waker works just fine with just grunts and shouts for expressions, since the faces of the characters are incredibly good at showing emotion.

And in the Metroid games there's never anyone to talk to anyway. :-)

A very underrated game is Eternal Darkness for the Gamecube, witch has voiceover. And it's not crappy Resident Evil-style voices either, it's real good. Characters actually sound like they care for what they are doing, though the main bad guy does get a bit over the top sometimes...

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Re:Speech Stuff

[Snowmit]

And why is Microsoft doing the criticism? Do they really think they have more to gain by attacking Nintendo than by going after Sony?

If you were to actually read the article you would learn that he has a lot of respect for Nintendo.

Here, to save you some clicking:

EF: [But] you asked me before what's the last game I spent a lot of time on--that'd be the new Pokemon.

EGM: Pokemon?

EF: Yeah. But then, you know, I've been playing games forever, and some of my favorite games of all time are Nintendo games. I have no problem loving a Nintendo product, because there's a lot there to love. But when you ask me about the future and where things are going, maybe [Nintendo and I] don't agree on that.

See, in the real world, it is possible to both like and dislike aspects of something. All in all he comes accross as a thoughtful, reasonable person who is very interested in pushing games as an artform. It was pretty interesting.

Fries is an idiot.

[Anonymous Coward]

(1) Them attempting to have Xbox games in every genre is *driving away* 3rd party publishers. There's no incentive to develop a type of game for that platform if Microsoft already has it covered. A competent game development team would probably be able to make a better *game* than a Microsoft internal team (who are a bunch a monkeys, I tell ya) - but they have no hopes in competing based on the *marketing* and money that MS likes to throw at their own titles. 3rd parties can't even compete on the branding: for example, Microsoft's "Xbox Sports Network" titles. At least Sony had the decency to separate theirs ("989 Studios").

What's worse is that Microsoft games are notoriously bland. Everything's "okay" about them. Graphics, sound, gameplay - nothing special, nothing that would offend *anybody*. Nothing that would be funny either.

(2) Microsoft's Xbox team repeatedly and consistently ignored 3rd party developer input when they were designing the Xbox. Witness - the Xbox controller. Nobody outside of Microsoft liked it. Microsoft asked developers repeatedly, developers repeatedly told Microsoft that it sucked. And they were completely ignored - probably because some high up egomaniac like Ed Fries greenlighted it and their underlings were all "yes" men and didn't want to say that it sucked.

(3) Xbox Live. You have no option of ignoring Microsoft's "Live" system if you want to make an online game. Everything *must* go through Microsoft, and gamers must pay Microsoft $5 a month for the ability to play online. Which immediately makes trying to develop or sell an online game far, far worse for a developer. Doubly so for a persistent online game or MMORPG because MS scalps $5 a month before you get a chance to ask customers to pay for access to your game. And Xbox games aren't allowed to talk to other systems. Which means no cross-platform Xbox and PS2/Gamecube/PC games to boost online population.

Oh, and have you played Xbox Live with the headset? A great idea - in theory - but in every game I've tried so far it's either total silence or a bunch of 9 year olds swearing at each other.

(4) Voice acting. In multiplayer games there should be no voice, other players is all you should hear talking. In single player - fine, whatever. I don't hate it, but don't care for it either. I don't care what language it's in (with subtitles), so long as it's not *bad* acting and I can have them shut the hell up when I'm tired at the end of the day and just want to kill something.

I'm sure that no developer has faith that Microsoft cares for anything but their own success.