Peter Moore got in front of yet another interviewers mic, this past Monday. This time it was with MTV News for a little 360 pimp'n.
Moore was there to discuss all the innovations Microsoft had announced for the Xbox360 and to get his message out to the general public. It's no small coincidence he went on TV on the eve of the Playstation 3 launch as well as the holiday shopping season chaos.
Moore started off by talking about the new Video on Demand service announced for the Xbox360. If you're an Xbox360 owner, you already know what this is about, although he did get into specifics about download sizes. TV shows will be available in both standard and high definition versions similar to game trailers that have been on Marketplace since the beginning. A high definition version of a 1 hour show like CSI will be a 2 GB download while the standard definition version will be around 565 MB. TV shows when downloaded will be 'yours' to watch for as long as you want. Although Moore didn't talk specific on pricing, he did say they will be in line with other V.O.D. vendor prices. Movies on the other hand are not yours to keep, they are rentals. When you download a movie, you can watch it as many times as you want for 24 hours starting from the first time you play it. Movies will also be available in High Definition weighing in at around 6 GB and standard definition at 1.7 GB. To bad he didn't spill the beans about what consumers really want to know. How much will it cost? Looks like we will have to wait until the 22nd to find out.
Moore then got into upcoming titles that we've all been hearing about this year at E3, X06 and various other trade shows. A few of them were even 06 releases that got bumped to 07. Crackdown, Forza Motorsport 2, Shadowrun and Too Human have all been given a release window of 'before the end of June 07'. He also said he's seen Halo 3 and it's everything fans would expect out of the next generation Halo game.
On the topic of Halo, Peter commented on two Halo projects in the hands of Peter Jackson. One of those is a new Interactive Story Telling medium. Teams from Bungie are going in groups to Peter Jackson's studio in new Zealand for brain storming sessions. Nothing was said about the date this new Halo project would reach the Xbox360 and we may not see anything until 2008. The other project of course is the Halo Movie which recently was dropped by Universal and Fox. Moore said that everyone in Hollywood is looking at the project again and several are checking out the work already done. With the magnitude of the script and the passion of the fans, we will just have to wait a little longer for the Halo movie but it will be comming. One thing is sure, both Bungie and Microsoft want the movie done right and won't settle for anything less.
One of the last things discussed is the controversial micro transactions. People in the gaming community are miffed at the actions of Electronic Arts in particular for charging people $60 for a game and then having $50 worth of downloads the day the game comes out. Many gamers have decided that enough is enough. It wasn't long after the Xbox360's launch when the gaming community was up in arms over the very first piece of game gear, the infamous Horse Armor for Oblivion costing an unreasonable amount of money and adding no value to the game other than cosmetics. Peter says that they do try and caution publishers about this kind of thing, but in the end it's up to the publisher and not Microsoft. It's up to us, the gamers to cry foul and tell the publishers to knock it off by not buying this stuff . We choose to download or not to download, if you think somethings too expensive or you're being ripped off, lay off the A button!
With 10 million Xbox360's being sold by the end of 2006 being estimated and now with downloadable media, Microsoft has a really strong position in the next-gen war. Sony has a lot of work ahead of them if they want to win this race. At least the Wii is in a race of their own.
Source: mtv.com
Moore started off by talking about the new Video on Demand service announced for the Xbox360. If you're an Xbox360 owner, you already know what this is about, although he did get into specifics about download sizes. TV shows will be available in both standard and high definition versions similar to game trailers that have been on Marketplace since the beginning. A high definition version of a 1 hour show like CSI will be a 2 GB download while the standard definition version will be around 565 MB. TV shows when downloaded will be 'yours' to watch for as long as you want. Although Moore didn't talk specific on pricing, he did say they will be in line with other V.O.D. vendor prices. Movies on the other hand are not yours to keep, they are rentals. When you download a movie, you can watch it as many times as you want for 24 hours starting from the first time you play it. Movies will also be available in High Definition weighing in at around 6 GB and standard definition at 1.7 GB. To bad he didn't spill the beans about what consumers really want to know. How much will it cost? Looks like we will have to wait until the 22nd to find out.
Moore then got into upcoming titles that we've all been hearing about this year at E3, X06 and various other trade shows. A few of them were even 06 releases that got bumped to 07. Crackdown, Forza Motorsport 2, Shadowrun and Too Human have all been given a release window of 'before the end of June 07'. He also said he's seen Halo 3 and it's everything fans would expect out of the next generation Halo game.
On the topic of Halo, Peter commented on two Halo projects in the hands of Peter Jackson. One of those is a new Interactive Story Telling medium. Teams from Bungie are going in groups to Peter Jackson's studio in new Zealand for brain storming sessions. Nothing was said about the date this new Halo project would reach the Xbox360 and we may not see anything until 2008. The other project of course is the Halo Movie which recently was dropped by Universal and Fox. Moore said that everyone in Hollywood is looking at the project again and several are checking out the work already done. With the magnitude of the script and the passion of the fans, we will just have to wait a little longer for the Halo movie but it will be comming. One thing is sure, both Bungie and Microsoft want the movie done right and won't settle for anything less.
One of the last things discussed is the controversial micro transactions. People in the gaming community are miffed at the actions of Electronic Arts in particular for charging people $60 for a game and then having $50 worth of downloads the day the game comes out. Many gamers have decided that enough is enough. It wasn't long after the Xbox360's launch when the gaming community was up in arms over the very first piece of game gear, the infamous Horse Armor for Oblivion costing an unreasonable amount of money and adding no value to the game other than cosmetics. Peter says that they do try and caution publishers about this kind of thing, but in the end it's up to the publisher and not Microsoft. It's up to us, the gamers to cry foul and tell the publishers to knock it off by not buying this stuff . We choose to download or not to download, if you think somethings too expensive or you're being ripped off, lay off the A button!
With 10 million Xbox360's being sold by the end of 2006 being estimated and now with downloadable media, Microsoft has a really strong position in the next-gen war. Sony has a lot of work ahead of them if they want to win this race. At least the Wii is in a race of their own.
Source: mtv.com
