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I recently read an article in gamesTM issue 167 about the development of the Xbox 360 and couldn’t help feeling that the interviewee, J Allard, who was a senior developer on the team which designed the console, had rather a selective memory about how good the machine was and the extent of its commercial success.
I recently read an article in gamesTM issue 167 about the development of the Xbox 360 and couldn’t help feeling that the interviewee, J Allard, who was a senior developer on the team which designed the console, had rather a selective memory about how good the machine was and the extent of its commercial success.
The 360s true contribution to gaming posterity was a
negative one and one for which gamers are still literally paying. “From a business point of view we
had a few simple goals…it was to exceed ten million Xbox Live subscribers
within five years,” boasts Allard. He
continues “From an experience point of view we wanted to deliver a console that…felt
incomplete if you were offline”.
I find it cynical that Allard is proud to have created
something which you could pay £250 for only to get it home and find that you
had not finished forking out; and never would.
Allard also claims that the team working on the Xbox 360 foresaw the advent of digital distribution of games and add-on content and the demise of physical media and that the rest of the games industry had to be dragged along. "...the industry didn't have faith in...downloadable content or digital distribution." He says.
Given that the first model of the 360 had a 20 GB hard drive I find it hard to believe that Microsoft were anticipating an era of downloadable games in 2002. More likely Allard is retrospectively trying to trivialise PS3s superior Blue-ray media. He is also disregarding the fact that, even though Xbox One and PS4 both have substantial hard drives almost all triple-A games are still released on disc.
Allard's insecurities about Sony's higher capacity discs seem to be exposed again when he he later comments "we spent a stupid amount of time on stuff like HD-DVD in response to the competition...A new format for high-resolution movies was not important to us...the HD-DVD effort was a good example of how worrying about the competition can take you off your game."
I read this as meaning "we tried with HD-DVD, it didn't work out for us."
After the Xbox 360 project was over Allard worked first on developing Zune (Microsoft's iPod) and then on a prototype tablet called Courier. After those two unqualified successes he "retired" from Microsoft and now runs his own bicycle security software company.
As for the 360s commercial success? In the Anglo-Saxon world it was a massive hit, but this regional success tends to inform the view of many English speaking commentators. Worldwide Xbox 360 was outsold both by the Wii and (marginally) by the PS3 making it the least successful home console of it's generation.
I am a PlayStation owner and player but I do not criticise Xbox for the sake of it. Xbox 360 was an excellent machine. It is J Allard and his selective memory I object to.
Given that the first model of the 360 had a 20 GB hard drive I find it hard to believe that Microsoft were anticipating an era of downloadable games in 2002. More likely Allard is retrospectively trying to trivialise PS3s superior Blue-ray media. He is also disregarding the fact that, even though Xbox One and PS4 both have substantial hard drives almost all triple-A games are still released on disc.
Allard's insecurities about Sony's higher capacity discs seem to be exposed again when he he later comments "we spent a stupid amount of time on stuff like HD-DVD in response to the competition...A new format for high-resolution movies was not important to us...the HD-DVD effort was a good example of how worrying about the competition can take you off your game."
I read this as meaning "we tried with HD-DVD, it didn't work out for us."
After the Xbox 360 project was over Allard worked first on developing Zune (Microsoft's iPod) and then on a prototype tablet called Courier. After those two unqualified successes he "retired" from Microsoft and now runs his own bicycle security software company.
As for the 360s commercial success? In the Anglo-Saxon world it was a massive hit, but this regional success tends to inform the view of many English speaking commentators. Worldwide Xbox 360 was outsold both by the Wii and (marginally) by the PS3 making it the least successful home console of it's generation.
I am a PlayStation owner and player but I do not criticise Xbox for the sake of it. Xbox 360 was an excellent machine. It is J Allard and his selective memory I object to.
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