J Allard Interviewed 233
malchus6 writes "J Allard, one of the Xbox honchos over at Microsoft, spent an hour in an online chat answering questions regarding the upcoming release of the 360 including some pointed questions having to do with the two different price points, no wi-fi inclusion, his opinion on HD-DVD and more..."
Revisionism at MS (Score:3, Interesting)
Q: Why even offer the core package, its seems quite useless
A: great question! the thing to remember that while we designed a no compromises game system, a huge percentage of our customers are not like the folks in this chat room. recognize that more than 75% of the folks on xbox have not played halo. by introducing the core system we are sending a signal to the market that we are committed to this part of the market just like with the xbox 360 premium bundle that we are committed to you.
J Allard (Expert):
Q: Why even offer the core package, its seems quite useless
A: the significance of this message can not be understated. many of the publishing and retail partners want our commitment to grow the market. and as you have heard from us in our press conferences and such we are very committed to growing the market.
Backwards compatibility (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Confusion (Score:2, Interesting)
Well, some of my son's friend are hard-core gamers, and they're severely underwhelmed. My son went down to the Game Testing Expo in Seattle's Pacific Science Center this Saturday, hoping to see something from the xBox 360 or PS3 or Nintendo Revolution, but there wasn't anything there except mist (vapor is too strong a word). So he and all his teen friends seem to be leaning towards planning on buying the Nintendo Revolution when it comes out, as the game choices for the xBox were severely underwhelming.
But they did love the Dance Dance Revolution demos, even if they were single-player only - that and some kind of Crystal Edition for Sonic were tops on their fun games we must buy list.
Well, maybe something to remember (Score:3, Interesting)
Microsoft is invading /. (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Revisionism at MS (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:More readable format? (Score:3, Interesting)
As far as the devs are concerned, this isn't much of a change.
It is, however, why there's this big push with the 360 to market it primarily for its usefulness outside of off-the-shelf games.
They're trying to take a part that was a loss (financially) the last go-round and make it into a premium upgrade that only depends on a couple major content providers for decent support (Microsoft, Movie studios, etc).
Their target market ain't us. Not anymore.
Re:Revisionism at MS (Score:5, Interesting)
For example, out of the box, the $300 model can't save games. It doesn't have a hard drive, and it doesn't have a memory card. Compared to the xbox 360, this is most definately not BetterThanLastTime. The gist of the interview seems to be that the xbox 360 is, oddly enough, not designed for gamers.
Personally I think that every single person who buys the $300 package is going to realize they can't save, become annoyed, and purchase a memory card. If every single person is going to get annoyed and buy one, why not include one with the unit and save annoying customers?
There are many such things that are wrong with the useless $300 package. It looks to me like Microsoft is ignoring gamers (Or at least giving gamers second-seat) in favour of targeting the (possibly) broader "home entertainment appliance" market. I think this will backfire, especially with the more recent news that the PS3's "high" price might be $299, underpricing Microsoft's only out-of-box-useful package.