GamesBeat: So is there a path for you guys to improve the hardware over time, because you have the cloud?
Whitten: It’s still a console. We think of it as a fixed set of hardware. It’s an important thing, to allow game developers to have a target that they can continually optimize against. But as you say, because that’s backed by the cloud—the cloud will get better every day. We’re always adding more servers. We’re always working on how to optimize that experience, and we’ll have more and more abilities to take advantage of that functionality.
GamesBeat: Were there any significant details you didn’t quite have time for at the press conference, anything that’s available now?
Whitten: There were a couple of things that I shared. You do things so quickly at a press conference. I’m obviously very proud of the things we’re doing with Xbox Live – what we’re doing with Project Upload and how game DVR works. Likewise, what we’re doing with moving to real currency versus Microsoft Points and how you think about guests being able access some of the Gold features. I sent out a letter to the community that captured a bunch of those. As always, we’re going to continue to roll out more features inside of Gold and inside of the platform to make the experience better.
GamesBeat: I missed the SmartGlass feature that showed you how much of a level you’d completed until I saw it here.
Whitten: The other one I’ll show you on SmartGlass—one of the things we see with SmartGlass is, I think you’re going to have two uses cases. There’s core control, and then there are games creating really neat experiences. Project Spark is an example where you can use the touch display to carve the land and do things like this.
What I have here is my full guide running for the TV integration. I can see my trending shows. I have basically the full experience down on SmartGlass. I can also switch that into remote control mode, where I can change channels or volume. I can even treat it as a universal remote. Now, the thing that’s cool about this—I’m going to buy an Xbox One. Suddenly my smartphone is going to become a really great universal remote. I didn’t have to do anything else. It just started happening for me. It’ll provide all of this access into how television integration works inside of the console. It’s part of the power that you get by investing in the SmartGlass platform.
We’re spending a lot time on what you call the haptic feel. The key here is, how do you make a really great control experience? I want to be able to do it while I’m looking up and feel good about how that works.
GamesBeat: If I had a criticism of the Microsoft press briefing it would be that if you added all this hardware just for Kinect — if you built it into the box, you maybe should have shown something that really knocked everybody’s socks off that uses Kinect. Almost every game there was a typical controller-driven game.
Whitten: This is a long series of beats between now and launch. For us, this started three weeks ago at the Xbox One unveil. We did show a lot about Kinect and how it works with television and the integration that we’re doing there. What we said then is that we were going to focus a lot of E3 on our games portfolio, and specifically a lot of our core games portfolio. But you’re going to see more things coming out around how Kinect works, and the Kinect and controller integration. You’re going to see a lot more of that integration, and it’s going to feel very natural in a lot of gameplay scenarios.
You make a good point, though. The beautiful part now is that we’ve shared a ton over the last three weeks, and now we can get on our path of constantly showing and helping people understand the system. We’ll be showing people more of the experiences. The fundamental thing I would say is that all of these platforms are about the experiences that you can have, what’s unique and different about the experiences. It’s how the living worlds work in Sunset Overdrive or the community in Project Spark or how Kinect works in a bunch of gaming experiences. That’s what’s going to excite people about what we’re going to do with this.
GamesBeat: The force feedback demo you have is a good one, but now you’re going to need a kiosk in every store to show that to consumers.
Whitten: So much of the stuff is experiential, yeah. The thing you’ll also find is that you learn about a lot of this at your friend’s house. That’s always been an important part of how Xbox works, that word of mouth. People have great experiences and they want to get hold of them for themselves.
GamesBeat: Is there a reason that the processing doesn’t happen in the Kinect, that a lot of the image processing happens down in the box?
Whitten: It’s actually a mix happening in both. There are things we’re doing with cloud processing in some scenarios. There are things we’re doing with local processing in the Kinect sensor. There are things we’re doing on the console. A lot of it depends on the scenario. What we’ve focused on is how we build a complete architecture that allows you to make the experiences that you want by mixing that local and cloud processing. It’s about how you balance the right architectural choices there.
GamesBeat: The $500 price again — does this have anything to do with anything in particular? Former EA chief John Riccitiello has been asking if you, the console makers, can guarantee enough supply to be bold during this holiday season. People tend to price things high if they’re not sure they can do that, and so they use the price to reduce demand.
Whitten: Before you even get to price, we’re focused on delivering an immense amount of value to our customers and delivering a lot of premium entertainment experiences that they can’t get anywhere else. I feel great about where we’re landing with the product, and I feel good about the price. I don’t think we’re trying to game some economic system or something like that. We’re trying to deliver an entertainment system that is amazing on day one.
For me, one of the things I’m most proud of in my career is that the Xbox 360 today is so different from the Xbox 360 in 2005. It’s the result of a lot of the decisions we made in 2003 and 2004 and 2005, to build a system that you could expand over time to become something even greater. It’s the same thing with Xbox One. It’s amazing on day one and we’ve built for the future. Over the next five, ten years, you’re going to get incredible innovation inside the platform.
GamesBeat: There was a lot of industrial design work done in-house this time. Is that because you guys had built up more competence?
Whitten: We’ve focused a lot over the last several years on building up core industrial design, as well as in-house deep expertise in things like CMF – colors, materials, and finish. You’ve seen that. You didn’t know it was us building our capability, but when you saw things like the C-3PO controller and the other nice special editions we’ve done, that’s been because we’ve now built a new level of capability that’s allowed us to own our design language, from the software all the way through the hardware, at a richer and frankly better level than we’ve ever been able to do in the past. That’s a place we’re going to keep investing.
GamesBeat: Are you going to talk about more peripherals at some point? It doesn’t seem like there’s been much mention of them.
Whitten: You’re going to see a lot more from us there. The accessories on Xbox 360, we’ve obviously invested a lot there over the years. We’ve provided a lot of options in multiple categories. When you launch a platform, there’s so much to talk about that it takes a while for you to get it all out. We want people to focus on our platform and our games lineup. There’ll be more from us in the future.
GamesBeat: The 360 is staying around this time. Last time, the original Xbox went away. Does that make things different in some ways for your strategy?
Whitten: From my perspective, I think the community we have on the Xbox 360 – especially where it is internationally – is amazing. Look at Xbox Live and the number of people that are constantly playing on it. My belief is that ecosystem is going to continue to be vibrant for years to come. We’re going to keep investing in it from a platform level — which you saw with our announcement of the new console form factor – and a content level. As long as it’s a vibrant community and it continues to get a lot of development from game creators, there’s going to be a lot to do.
Also, for me, this is the first time we’ve had a family of devices that we can talk about in this particular space. You’re going to see the 360 continue to drive into new markets and reach new types of customers that can take advantage of the catalog of games and entertainment we have on it.
GamesBeat: We won’t see a new Halo until next year. Is there any particular reason for that? You’ve had a Halo game coming out every year for a while. We’ve got the mobile gaming coming, but not a main console Halo.
Whitten: Well, we have an incredible lineup for launch. We also wanted to create our best Halo yet, the one that runs at 60 frames per second with a next-generation story for Master Chief. We want it to be great, and I think people will agree when it comes out.