Peter Moore is "corporate vice president of Worldwide Retail Sales and Marketing for the Home and Entertainment Division of Microsoft Corporation and is responsible for all sales and marketing in Europe and Japan for the Xbox, Xbox and PC games from Microsoft Game Studios, and home software and hardware products sold at retail" (according to his official Microsoft bio). As long-winded as his business card must be, Mr. Moore is actually really cool. Omni and a couple of other gaming journalists had a private interview with Mr. Moore at this year's E3. Besides revealing his involvement in the House of the Dead movie, Mr. Moore also enlightened us on how games are really developed, Microsoft's Xbox line-up for the next 18 months, release dates, the "hiatus" of the XSN sports titles, Xbox troubles in Japan and the effect of "big mo'." What follows is an edited transcript of the interview.

Peter Moore

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E3 2004: Q&A with Peter Moore

Journalist #1: In terms of momentum heading into the next hardware cycle, it seems like you guys could slingshot around the sun with the kind of momentum you have in terms of your line-up and the way you position things—

Peter Moore (PM): Big mo’ is on our side. Do Canadians know what “big mo’” is? Big mo’ is momentum. This is my second E3 with Microsoft and I think it’s my fifth or sixth E3 in my previous life and I’ve never seen so much momentum. With the line-up and Xbox Live numbers, the lack of decisiveness from our competitors right now... Clearly, we have a lot of momentum on our side. We’re very excited [about that].

J1: Is this the best line-up you’ve ever had since you’ve been in the industry in terms of when you were at Sega?

PM: We had a great Dreamcast launch line-up. The difference there was, ultimately the death knell for the Dreamcast, we just didn’t have the flow to follow-up the great launch. You remember Sonic, Ready to Rumble, Hydrothunder, Soul Calibur, Powerstone… but then it was Crazy Taxi six months later and that was about it. One of the things I hope you see here is that we’re looking 18-months out for Xbox… I look at Full Spectrum Warrior, I don’t know if Activision has announced [a ship date for] Doom 3 yet, all the way to Jade Empire, we’re now starting to get early looks at our Holiday ’06 line-up as well. So, we’re seeing 18 to 24 month line-ups for the Xbox platform. And Xbox Live is just on fire right now and the EA announcement was the icing on the cake.

Journalist #2: Now that EA is onboard, I haven’t heard much about [resurrecting] XSN.

PM: We announced about a month ago that the XSN sports titles would be on hiatus for this season with a view to analyzing what we do. It’s simple. Microsoft Games Studio, which reports to my organization, has to add value to the sports genre. To be frank, we felt that we weren’t adding [to the genre]. EA and Sega do a phenomenal job with the four major sports. And with companies like Acclaim and Midway and even Activision coming in with different ways of looking at sports. It really didn’t feel like it was the best use of our studios. And we’re also trying to maybe take a different look at how we do sports on the platform.

J2: There’s no shot at tying XSN into EA’s sports?

PM: No, I don’t see… XSN as a platform will still exist for the existing sports. You can still go to the XSN site, look at your leads tables… but we’re going to make a difference in sports. And we’re going to have to do something different because we’re very well taken of by EA and Sega’s ESPN line-up.

J1: Is there a chance you might never do a sports game again?

PM: There’s a chance we could change our mind and do it this year. There is that possibility – that we may not do a traditional sim like you know it, in the near future. We’re figuring out all that right now.

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Omni: You were talking about “big momentum”—

PM: Big mo’!

Omni: Big mo’. Right, I should use the lingo. Does that carry over into Japan? If the magazines and the Internet are anything to go by, the Xbox is struggling there. How will Xbox become a viable platform in Japan?

PM: It will take time – time which we’re willing to give it. We’re very

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committed to Japan. Japan isn’t going to change overnight. We only shipped 18 months ago in Japan and it’s been a very difficult period of time, to say the least. But we see Japan as a long-term project. One of the interesting things since I’ve been in control of Japan – 14 months – there’s been a complete and opposite 180 in terms of the publishers there and their reaction to Xbox. One of the interesting side things, which you probably read when you read the websites about Japan is the declining market in Japan. And the difficulties that Konami, Capcom, Namco, Sega, Bandai, name your publisher, are having just sustaining their business in the Japanese market. They need to be global; they are global. They look at the success that Tecmo has had with our platform on a global basis and all of these guys are doing Xbox titles. The Japanese market is tough for them right now but my commitment to them – I was there three weeks ago – is very much a long-term play. We made some major mistakes, quite frankly, when we launched in Japan. Microsoft often doesn’t quite get it right the first time but one thing I’ve learned about this company: learn by our mistakes and we’ll get it right eventually.

J2: Controller size being one issue.

PM: Yeah, and we fixed that. Last night I was at a Japanese press dinner. We flew over fifteen our Xbox [developers]… You think Xbox Live is a big deal over here; in Japan, that’s where we put all of our money, all our resources. And the video-chat you saw Monday night was done in Japan for the Japanese market by guys there – small, skunkworks-type team of engineers [associated with] classic Microsoft projects – that came to me eight months ago and said, “We can build video chat on Xbox Live, with as many as five people and have all these cool features.” Really, it was like three people who did it. I was very proud of the fact they did it. And that’s the great thing about Microsoft – you can go off and get some talented engineers, give them a couple of resources and they come back with something so spectacular. Now, Japan will do it because the infrastructure is far better than anywhere else in the world. But what we learned, what goes on there, it’s the logical next step.

J2: You dropped a chunk of change on Rare. Has it been worth the money?

PM: Rare’s a long-term [investment]. No one can stop talking about Conker out there. Conker’s going to be a big sleeper for us, I think. Man, I played it and it is a blast! Conker is a character… because it came out on the N64, you’ll remember Bad Fur Day.. but Nintendo can’t carry that off. God bless them, they tried but they tried the Mature rating thing… But our platform, the fact that it’s Xbox Live, the fact that if you wish you can unlock foul language, and what have you. For us, as we come into our post mortem of E3, where we thought Conker was going to be, it’s in a far better position. Conker will be a big hit for us, I think. Rare will be just fine – don’t worry about Rare.

J1: The Dreamcast had the best line-up of any console—

PM: At launch.

WG: Mmmmm, I think, at ending too. In terms of what you learned about that and about our business, what are some of the things you compare between that business and the Xbox?

PM: I addressed Microsoft Games Studio staff last week on our campus, and talked about that exact thing. About a steady, consistent flow of triple-A titles and having people come back; more reasons, on a consistent basis, to buy more games for the console and therefore to drive more console sales. What happened with Dreamcast was that we lost momentum. It was like the Little Engine That Could getting up that hill and in the face of the impending arrival of the PS2, we didn’t have great answers in the Summer of 2000. Like I said, I remember shipping Crazy Taxi and NHL 2K in the same week in February of 2000 then looking off into the horizon for content and seeing nothing. Seeing Samba di Amigo and Seaman.

J2: Did that have anything to do with the development tools?

PM: It had nothing to do with development tools. It had everything to do with batch portfolio planning. From, “Let’s throw everything early.” But it’s all about strategic portfolio planning on a 1^st and 3^rd Party basis. And we didn’t have a good relationship with our 3^rd Parties because it was a Japanese company [that] felt that the 1^st Party carried. But literally, the 1^st Party was Samba di Amigo and Seaman. These were cool, quirky games but not potentially million-unit sellers that would drive the console in the face of the impending launch of PS2. At [Microsoft Games Studio] we’re very different. What we do 1^st Party, we do a lot less games but a lot bigger games. Our role is to put the console on our shoulders and drive it.

J1: In terms of adding developers – you guys added Rare, a couple of others, there are rumors you’re buying Bioware… Is that a rumor?

PM: Yeah, it is rumor. And you know what Microsoft comments about rumors – we just don’t. What do you expect from me! It’s a rumor and I’m not commenting.

Omni: Almost without exception, every game I’ve seen on the floor -- I ask the reps or developer, “When do you expect to ship?” “Q4 2004.”

PM: Welcome to the video game business.

Omni: Is there any way that is going to change? What will change that?

PM: The development process and milestone schedules will always be amorphous the further you are out and they tighten up once you get close. Here’s what happens in very simple terms, here’s how games are built: concept, prototype, greenlight. All right, this is a fighting game which is going to have these characters, 55 levels, it’s going to take 24 months to develop, we need an $8 million budget, and here’s the platform it’s going to be on. And then you go off for six months and nobody hears from you. This is the way this business works. You leave them alone… they’re working on character art, on building the engine (if they don’t already have one). Then they come back to you and say, “All right, here’s where we’re at, here’s where we think we’ll be for our Alpha, our Beta,” and then it goes into Test. So, believe me, I’ve seen this a hundred times. You hit your Alpha, you hit your Beta – it’s an online game, you’ll do some Beta testing to make sure the network code is okay. Then you can be six weeks from where you think you should be then it goes into Test, then you find something, crash bugs. And you’ve got a hundred guys banging on the game 24/7… I don’t know if you’ve ever been to a testing facility… and all of the sudden you get the, “Oh shit!” moment where something is just… and every time you fix something it changes the code somewhere else. So, the industry, the unpredictably is part of it. You can tattoo all you like on arms, but we’re relatively comfortable because we’ll throw every resource known to Man [at Halo 2]. But the closer you get, the closer you can land on a date. Retail understands this, the consumer doesn’t because they think [we] can just nail a date a work backwards from that. God, I wish it was that simple!

J2: A lot of the gaming journalists are now saying, “A lot of development time means a better game.” We don’t want the bugs.

PM: Absolutely but we also take a philosophy of… we merchandise our ship dates as well. There are games we’ll announce ship dates for that were actually ready a few weeks earlier. We’re a big business. You have to pick the right Tuesday to ship the game on. We also look at movie release schedules… For example, potentially Halo 2 could have shipped on November 2^nd till one day we looked at the calendar and figured there was a little Presidential election happening that day. [We thought], let’s get out of the way of that one and give the game its own oxygen somewhere else. It just didn’t seem like a good day to release a war-like game. The only place where there is discipline there because there has to be, is sports games. There’s gotta be a window where you have to ship otherwise… You’re not shipping hockey in July. There’s certain things you don’t do. But it’s easier there because you, typically, have the engine, a tremendous amount of the art already done, and its primarily updating the features for every year. A massive game like Fable is a good example… There was a time I couldn’t you what year, never mind what quarter and what month [it would ship].

J1: The game industry has long aspired to be like the movie industry. Has there been any thought given to blocking off days to make sure a game gets its own time in the sun like movies do?

PM: The movie industry can put their release schedules out because their stuff is a lot more predictable, ‘cause it’s linear. Once it’s in film, then it’s just slicing and dicing it – not much code in that, unless you’re George Lucas, I guess. But here’s what I will tell you, the week of November 9, the biggest entertainment property in North America will be Halo 2. I guarantee you we’ll do more than any freaking movie that’s out there. I think we could do $70 to $85 million US that week. It’s tough for movies to do that kind of money. Yeah, Thanksgiving time, some of the blockbusters that come out but right now I don’t see anything. Shrek [2] will be huge. The Activision folks have all seen it and they say it’s just so much better than the first one.

* * *

Then we “waxed lyrically” a little about the increasing interest the game industry is creating on the stock market and Hollywood, and celebrity sightings (which included Elijah Wood and Steven Spielberg). We also touched on the increased coverage in the major newspapers; the idea that gaming is slowly becoming mainstream; the untapped development potential waiting to explode out of Canada, particularly Vancouver, BC. It was at this point that Peter Moore revealed his role in the House of the Dead movie as a zombie.

Several topics that came out the interview, particularly the Live video-chat capabilities will be examined in future Features.

- Omni

comments@armchairempire.com

(May 22, 2004)