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Brevity
04-29-2002, 08:42 AM
Xbox Live Interview
David Hufford talks about the Xbox online initiative that will be revealed at E3.
Monday April 29, 2002 | Prophet


Xbox Communicator headset
With all the hype about console games going online, you can imagine that its a big deal when a company like Microsoft announces their strategy for enabling their console system to handle online gaming in a major way. Recently Microsoft began to slowly reveal thier plans for bringing the Xbox online -- they've code-named it Xbox Live, and at the front of the pack shouting out the praises of this plan Microsoft Xbox product manager David Hufford. We recently had the opportunity to talk to David about all things related to Xbox Live -- along with their plans for the Xbox at E3 and their freshly released controller for North American and European Xbox players. So without further delay, here's what David had to say about their online strategy:

GameSpy: Tell us a bit more about Xbox Live. What are the components that Microsoft will have to put in place, what will developers have to do on their end to support it and what components will gamers need in order for it to work properly?

David Hufford: Well, let me talk to you about how we're viewing Xbox Live: Really Xbox Live is about creating this community of gamers who want more out of video games. We're taking a service approach in putting Xbox Live together and everything we do on the service is designed to blow gamers away with new cool inner operable features. So in phase one of our service we're going to do things that enable you to find any type of player that you want to play at that given moment -- so if you just want to find any old random guy, you can get on our matchmaking service and find somebody 365 days a year/7 days a week. And if you want to find your freinds, we're going to make it real easy to do that at a moments notice. Imagine sitting on your couch in San Francisco and your best friend in LA or New England summons you to play a game on the service... it's kind of like instant messaging for games.. We're going to have those features across every single game that works on the Xbox Live service. And the Xbox Live service will be voice enabled, so that people can talk smack if that's what they choose to do or holler, or just strategize.. So there's going to be a core set of features that just work across every game -- when you buy a game that is Xbox Live enabled, you're going to know that it supports those core features. We're also doing a lot online with the service to make sure we deal with cheaters -- we ban cheating.. we know that that's a big hassle for people online and we want to take the cheaters out and let the good guys play. It is also designed to be secure and safe. You'll only have one password, so you don't have a list of passwords next to your couch or something that you have to look at every time you want to log onto the service.. So in a nutshell that's what we're doing in phase one. It's going to be a steady build; we're going to do a consumer beta test in the coming months and we'll be looking for a small pack of gamers -- pioneers -- to help us test the service, bang on the service, make the service better... and then we'll launch it later on this year..

GameSpy: Is it operational now? Are you testing it now?

David Hufford: We have the server room, it is up and running and developers are creating games for Xbox Live right now. They are testing servers, they are testing their games on the servers.. so all the hard work has started. It's actually been ongoing for the last six or seven months.

GameSpy: Are you going to have any type of legacy support for older games or are you going to reissue older titles to work with Xbox Live?

David Hufford: Any game that will be Xbox Live enabled will be logo'd on the box. We'll look at old titles and decide whether or not we want to add online features to them.. we'll look at those games and decide if that would make for a compelling Xbox Live game. So we're going to have to look at everything on a case by case basis.

GameSpy: That would be a good way for developers to create expansion products to some existing games for sure..

David Hufford: Well, that's what we're pumped up about.. that's why we packed in the ethernet port and the hard drive in there was so that we could enable new types of things to happen on the console that we didn't have before. I talked about the baseline features that we're going to have, but over time we're going to have downloadable content.. it's going to take off like a wild ride. it's going to be a lot of fun.

GameSpy: There was a mention of this sort of thing in an interview somewhere that you could quickly switch to another game.. and a vague mention of some type of digital distribution support.. are you guys ready to talk about that and how much of that is true?

David Hufford: No.. maybe you're talking about cross-game notification. For example, if you and I are playing and you hop on the service i'll know you are there and I can decide to quit playing NFL Fever and go over and play Unreal if that what I want to do.. but other than that, we haven't gotten too descriptive about what additional features besides the ones i've already mentioned.

GameSpy: So you're not going to be doing any kind of digital distribution? David Hufford: No. It's all about games. The thing is that everything we're doing starts and ends with video games and we're not trying to do anything but make the games' experience kick some serious butt..

GameSpy: Will Live use any components of The Zone or will it be a part of The Zone?

David Hufford: It is not modelled after The Zone. We are obviously broadband and we know that gamers want an easy access experience and an "always on" fast action gameplay experience. We're taking a lot of what we learned on The Zone about how to build communities, how to nurture them, letting the community rule itself -- that sort of thing... we're taking a lot of that knowledge and we've applied them to everything we're building with this service. The PC and the console are such different experiences and the people that play on those devices expect different things, so we're trying to make the Xbox Live service console-like; it's got to be simple and we know that gamers in the living room just won't tolerate the hassles that they do on the PC.

GameSpy: Do you think that Xbox Live is going to open the door for the massively multiplayer market; are there going to be any game of this nature and do you plan on showing anything like that at E3?

David Hufford: Well, we'll announce some games at E3. We know that the service side is super super important -- you've got to support it with kick ass games. So at E3 we'll "show a little leg" and unveil some new titles.

GameSpy: Just for the record, what are some of the key peripherals that are going to come with the Xbox Live retail package?

David Hufford: Well, we haven't talked about how we're going to market the product just yet. Some of those details will come out in the next few months.. we might share some of those at E3. So I would say stay tuned for any more information on that.

GameSpy: But we know its going to come with like a headset and other components, right?

David Hufford: Well, we are designing the Xbox Communicator. Now whether that becomes part of a first wave retail package or not -- those are the details we haven't announced and are not ready to yet. We're working through some of the fine details there..

cont...

Brevity
04-29-2002, 08:42 AM
GameSpy: Let's talk about the brand new controller being rolled out this week -- Controller S. What does it offer gamers, what is different about it and who will be particularly interested in using it?

David Hufford: Well, it's supposed to be out April 30th, but i've seen some chat around the net that people are already finding it in stores. getting it and actually having a good time with it. What makes it different from the original? Well obviously its size -- it is more along the lines of what we shipped in Japan. When we shipped our initial shipments of the Xbox in the US a lot of gamers said "we'd like to get a smaller controller" (some people fell in love with the big controller when they didn't think they would, initially).. We wanted to bring more choice to the market, so we designed a controller based off what we did for Japan and we thought "let's get it out there". The button placements are a little different -- you're going to see some slight differentiation in terms of the ways the buttons are placed -- we have the more traditional cross layout that you find on gamepads. And then there are some other minor tweaks; its a little bit different from the Japanese controller in that the cable length is a lot longer (people in the US tend to sit farther back on their couches) and some aesthetic differences like the jewel color being different (green and black). It's still got two memory slots, but the great news is that (tieing back to what we talked about earlier with Xbox Live) the Xbox Communicator is going to plug in there -- we're not going to steal a gameport from you. We wanted to make sure you could still get four guys on the couch when you went online.

GameSpy: How has the team handled losing Seamus -- Do you think your company & Seamus may have underestimated the community's outcry about his departure?

David Hufford: Well none of us were surprised that Seamus left. Seamus did a great job of helping us get the Xbox off the ground, he was a strong contributor ( especially in the early days) and his passion in the product is well documented. But you know, it also takes a team to win and we've got an all-star team here. Its time that guys like Jay Allard, who's building the online game service, (I don't know you Jay's history but he's sort of a legend here at the company -- he brought the Internet to Microsoft) and Ed Fries -- really the job is in their hands to make sure that games come; Ed has to make sure that great games keep coming and Jay's job is to make sure that we build the right infrastructure so that game creators & gamers have an awesome time on Xbox Live. This was the right time for Seamus to go and pursue other opportunities. And he's going to do stuff for Xbox so we're pretty pumped about that. I don't know if you've heard or not but we also added Ken Louden from Nintendo to our team.. He's working for Ed Fries directly now and he's helping us build the future and he came here because he thought that Xbox was the future, so the team's getting better. We're a bigger and badder group and that's a good thing for gamers..

GameSpy: Is Seamus going to be announcing something "in cooperation" with Microsoft at E3?

David Hufford: If he is, I don't know anything about it. I think Seamus' next step will be telling the world what he's up to. The only thing we know is that he is off working on a new game company and that Xbox is sort of at the center of what he wants to do. Other than that, we don't know much.

GameSpy: How many games have been tested on the Live service at this point and how things are going?

David Hufford: That's a good question. I don't know the exact number of games that have been tested, but at E3 we'll certainly talk about a number of games that will be on Xbox Live around the launch period and we'll be able to demonstrate a pretty stealthy list of games that are coming to the service.. It's no secret that guys working on Unreal Championship are doing something on Xbox Live. They have actually been working on an Xbox Live version of the game that from the ground up is going to take advantage of all these features in very rich ways. They are doing some very cool stuff that will probably come more to fruition by the time we get to E3.

GameSpy: How has the developer response to Xbox Live been thus far? Obviously they are going to be interested because it opens a few new doors for them on this system...

David Hufford: I think what's cool for developers is that we're the plumbers, right? We're the guys that do all the technology work so that they can focus on creativity. The last thing that a game developer wants to worry about is stuff like "who does he hire to manage their server farm? who do they take care of billing their customers?, how do they create tools for this new world?, etc.." We're doing a lot of that here. We have more people working on Xbox Live now then people that worked on the original Xbox launch. So there's a good group of people here and needless to say some of the best network engineers in the world work at Microsoft and if there's one group that those guys have sort of fallen in love with is Xbox. We're getting those guys over here and they are helping us take the technology mantle and run with it -- and make life a lot easier for the game development community .

GameSpy: When can we expect to hear more about you Xbox Live enabled line-up related to E3?

David Hufford: Well, we hope to have 150 titles on shelf by holiday (and there maybe some "northern movement" in that number).. people will get a better sense of our title line-up in the first few days of the show. We're actually holding our Xbox briefing on May 20. The thing on the games is that we are going to show people that we've got feature games that are going to fuel the passion of the hardcore gamers -- that we've got sort of the depth and breadth of games that everybody just loves knowing around the system and we're also going to be showing some future titles -- some of the things that people have to look forward to in the long term future that will just blow your socks off..



When we talk about the Xbox being online that is obviously going to be a very big thing for us. And we are equally interested in what Sony and Nintendo have to say about it. Nintendo's going to talk about getting into the online business -- we expect them to make statements about add-on peripherals that they;re going to bring to market, (we think that they will announce some infrastructure partners) and they'll explain some key features that are going to be working on their service.. I think online will be a big big battleground.. we know Sony is going to be back in the fray.. it'll be interesting to hear how their AOL/REAL Networks deal is moving along one year later...

GameSpy:The last thing I want to ask you about is Massively Multiplayer Online games. Is the Xbox capable of facilitating such a game and when do you think we're going to start hearing announcements on games like that?

David Hufford: Well whether or not the Xbox is capable of handling MMOGs -- the answer to that question is "heck yeah!" and whether game developers are talking about bringing those types of games to Xbox? Well, we're certainly in discussions with big name companies who have those types of games and know how to develop those types of games -- and we've got a few under our wing at Microsoft too -- so we're looking at all the assets we have and assets that might exist outside the company and while we haven't made any specific announcements, its certainly something to look forward to.

Thanks to David and the Microsoft PR team for giving us the opportunity to learn more about Live. Be sure to stick with GameSpy's continuing coverage of the Electronic Entertainment Expo -- which kicks off in late May -- for all things related to the Xbox, Live and anything related to bringing this MS console online!

Brevity
04-29-2002, 08:43 AM
http://www.gamespydaily.com/screenshots/april02/voice/voice01.jpg

Hugh_Jass
04-29-2002, 09:46 PM
Thanks. Good read.

Brevity
04-30-2002, 12:31 PM
Jass is the freaking man!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!