GamerSince'76
09-18-2008, 10:08 AM
Link (to part four):
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/gamesblog/2008/sep/11/gamesinterviews.microsoft?gusrc=rss&feed=technology
Peter Moore Interview: Part Four From Xbox to EA. Was Moore forced out by the Red Ring of Death? Here's his take on the manufacturing meltdown that cost Microsoft billions... The "red ring of death".
Today, we reach the nadir of Moore's Xbox career – the Red Ring of Death scandal. Rumour has it, the controversy ended his tenure at Microsoft, but in the background there were other forces at play. Here's his definitive account...
Nintendo got back into the market by reaching the demographics – the children and the women – that Microsoft had been unable to reach, because Xbox culture is still very much male-orientated… Why is that?
Well, it all goes back to the original premise of what Microsoft felt that at that time they needed to do be successful – to even get into the conversation. And so to launch the Xbox it needed to be very clear that this was not going to be PC games ported over – Flight Sim, Age of Empires, things like that. They needed to win the hearts and minds of the hardcore gamers, and there's no better way to do that than with blood, guts and bullets. That was the idea – it was hardcore.
And remember the ad in the UK – Champagne – which again was only shown once before it was banned, which was the baby being born, being catapulted through the air and ending up as the old guy in the grave… that set the tone. The theory was, rightly or wrongly, that if you win the hardcore gamer, then you can grow from the core – you can never go the other way. You hold your core but then you bring in the masses. But we were so good at what we did the first time around that it was difficult, then, to evolve.
And then Wii came along…
The GameCube had pretty much failed. I was in Tokyo when Iwata-san brought the controller out and said, 'here it is!' and we were all going, 'what the hell is that?''. I was with Robbie and I remember going 'I don't know… it's different'. But we knew that they were too good a company to lose twice in a row. But even then it was all about Sony, it was not about Nintendo, because they were so down and out – it's very difficult to think now, it was four years ago. You just couldn't picture that four or five years ago. GameCube was just… dying. The Revolution as it was called, we knew it couldn't be anything powerful. It was in the days when Sony and ourselves were saying it's all about hi-def, it's all about 5.1 sound, it's all about 1080i, and they said it's about a GameCube 1.5 and you're going to wave this stick around and have a lot of fun.
Is it strange to be the face of a corporation? Were you always aware of representing Microsoft or did you just say what you wanted to say?
No, I never said what I wanted to say. Within whatever I say, there's a messaging framework, I might say it in a more flamboyant way but there's a messaging framework that I'm usually very careful to adhere to otherwise my handlers would roll over me.
But there are times when, we probably… a year and a half ago we had a very difficult time with Xbox 360, with the hardware issues, and there are things that I've said that have been immortalized, and you try to say, well that's not what I meant… Infamously, a guy called Mike Antonucci of the San Jose Mercury news interviewed me and was really pushing hard, and of course when you're dealing with something as sensitive as defective hardware, you've got to be very careful what you say, not only about messaging but it's about legal issues. If you say things out of line on behalf of a company, you're exposing the company to lawsuits, people will take what you say and use it in a court of law - and Microsoft knows that very well.
But I was focused at that time on trying to get customer service up and running to take care of some hardware problems, and I said, 'You know, things break', and then I was called Marie Antoinette – let them eat cake. But the context I was using wasn't flippant, the sentence was, 'things break, but our job is to go fix it for you'. So what I said was twisted to that it looked like I didn't care.
Do you think bloggers genuinely are representative of consumers? You're a blogger yourself now, for EA Sports…
The reason I blog is that I think our brand needs more of a conversation with its consumers. I think over the years we haven't evolved the brand – you know 'It's in the game' barked at you buy an American voice - it makes us who we are, but who we are has to evolve. I actually enjoy blogging, I like people, despite the ones that want to kill me. The idea of having this unique tool to speak to people and listen to people is appealing to me. It's dangerous, because one word out of place, particularly if you're prolific and you do it in a more casual style – it's not a polished press release that PR folks will read then wordsmith, it's just a lad from Liverpool who really can't type, just saying, this is what I think. But I'm still the president of the label, so even though it's just a blog, it's the official blog – what I say in there is indicative of what I think as the president of EA Sports. It's a fine line that you tread.
So how did EA come for you?
John Riccitiello had taken a run at me before I went to Microsoft, and the night before I said yes to Robbie, John Riccitiello and the head of HR at that time had hauled me out for dinner to try to convince me to say no to Microsoft and to join EA – it was too late as I'd made a commitment to Robbie. Then Riccitiello came back and introduced the new label structure – I wouldn't have come to EA in the previous structure, it would make no sense. But my combination of sports experience with Reebok and Patrick and then obviously the ability to leverage that with my branding… and I love brands, and I love brands that are powerful, and linking the two – videogames and sports – together was an obvious attraction for me; as was getting back to the Bay area which I love.
So it became a very emotional six weeks, because we've got to sell the house, I've got to tell Robbie, I've got to tell Bill Gates, I've got to tell Ballmer, Xbox is firing on all cylinders – and I just kept saying no, it's not going to work, and in the end Riccitiello to his credit really painted a compelling picture of where the company was going, what I could do – what I'd be allowed to do with EA Sports and I decided okay, I'm going to do it.
It was unfortunate because as this was going on the Red Ring of Death story broke and so for better or worse the belief was that I'd been pushed out because of the hardware problems – that was not the case at all. But it was unfortunate timing. And then… I said yes in mid-June and still had E3 to get through, and in fairness to Microsoft I was already an EA employee while on stage with Rockband as head of Xbox – I wasn't an official EA employee, but I'd said yes to EA. Microsoft knew I was leaving and we made an agreement that my movement would be a material event to both companies, so we kept it all under wraps, didn't tell anybody. The only people who knew were Bill Gates, Robbie and Steve Ballmer at the Microsoft end. I did the press conference for Microsoft, I did three solid days of PR - the last interview was N'Gai Croal, he didn't know it then. The plan all along, which we'd worked with Microsoft and EA PR was to announce the following Monday – and that was kind of a bomb shell for Monday morning – I'm out of there.
And I look back now – it's only ten months ago, it seems like a lifetime ago. It was a tough time, it was hard to leave, it always ends up being much more difficult than you ever thought it would be – because I knew, literally, a thousand people by name, I was the face of the platform, then all of a sudden I'm gone. And I felt bad because a) I didn't want people to think I was fired, because I wasn't and b) I didn't want my team there to think I was jumping ship because of the hardware problems, which I wasn't. It was for personal and family reasons and the fact that I really relished the opportunity to get back into the sports side of things and then be able to apply videogame experience… it was the only job, no other job would have tempted me.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/gamesblog/2008/sep/11/gamesinterviews.microsoft?gusrc=rss&feed=technology
Peter Moore Interview: Part Four From Xbox to EA. Was Moore forced out by the Red Ring of Death? Here's his take on the manufacturing meltdown that cost Microsoft billions... The "red ring of death".
Today, we reach the nadir of Moore's Xbox career – the Red Ring of Death scandal. Rumour has it, the controversy ended his tenure at Microsoft, but in the background there were other forces at play. Here's his definitive account...
Nintendo got back into the market by reaching the demographics – the children and the women – that Microsoft had been unable to reach, because Xbox culture is still very much male-orientated… Why is that?
Well, it all goes back to the original premise of what Microsoft felt that at that time they needed to do be successful – to even get into the conversation. And so to launch the Xbox it needed to be very clear that this was not going to be PC games ported over – Flight Sim, Age of Empires, things like that. They needed to win the hearts and minds of the hardcore gamers, and there's no better way to do that than with blood, guts and bullets. That was the idea – it was hardcore.
And remember the ad in the UK – Champagne – which again was only shown once before it was banned, which was the baby being born, being catapulted through the air and ending up as the old guy in the grave… that set the tone. The theory was, rightly or wrongly, that if you win the hardcore gamer, then you can grow from the core – you can never go the other way. You hold your core but then you bring in the masses. But we were so good at what we did the first time around that it was difficult, then, to evolve.
And then Wii came along…
The GameCube had pretty much failed. I was in Tokyo when Iwata-san brought the controller out and said, 'here it is!' and we were all going, 'what the hell is that?''. I was with Robbie and I remember going 'I don't know… it's different'. But we knew that they were too good a company to lose twice in a row. But even then it was all about Sony, it was not about Nintendo, because they were so down and out – it's very difficult to think now, it was four years ago. You just couldn't picture that four or five years ago. GameCube was just… dying. The Revolution as it was called, we knew it couldn't be anything powerful. It was in the days when Sony and ourselves were saying it's all about hi-def, it's all about 5.1 sound, it's all about 1080i, and they said it's about a GameCube 1.5 and you're going to wave this stick around and have a lot of fun.
Is it strange to be the face of a corporation? Were you always aware of representing Microsoft or did you just say what you wanted to say?
No, I never said what I wanted to say. Within whatever I say, there's a messaging framework, I might say it in a more flamboyant way but there's a messaging framework that I'm usually very careful to adhere to otherwise my handlers would roll over me.
But there are times when, we probably… a year and a half ago we had a very difficult time with Xbox 360, with the hardware issues, and there are things that I've said that have been immortalized, and you try to say, well that's not what I meant… Infamously, a guy called Mike Antonucci of the San Jose Mercury news interviewed me and was really pushing hard, and of course when you're dealing with something as sensitive as defective hardware, you've got to be very careful what you say, not only about messaging but it's about legal issues. If you say things out of line on behalf of a company, you're exposing the company to lawsuits, people will take what you say and use it in a court of law - and Microsoft knows that very well.
But I was focused at that time on trying to get customer service up and running to take care of some hardware problems, and I said, 'You know, things break', and then I was called Marie Antoinette – let them eat cake. But the context I was using wasn't flippant, the sentence was, 'things break, but our job is to go fix it for you'. So what I said was twisted to that it looked like I didn't care.
Do you think bloggers genuinely are representative of consumers? You're a blogger yourself now, for EA Sports…
The reason I blog is that I think our brand needs more of a conversation with its consumers. I think over the years we haven't evolved the brand – you know 'It's in the game' barked at you buy an American voice - it makes us who we are, but who we are has to evolve. I actually enjoy blogging, I like people, despite the ones that want to kill me. The idea of having this unique tool to speak to people and listen to people is appealing to me. It's dangerous, because one word out of place, particularly if you're prolific and you do it in a more casual style – it's not a polished press release that PR folks will read then wordsmith, it's just a lad from Liverpool who really can't type, just saying, this is what I think. But I'm still the president of the label, so even though it's just a blog, it's the official blog – what I say in there is indicative of what I think as the president of EA Sports. It's a fine line that you tread.
So how did EA come for you?
John Riccitiello had taken a run at me before I went to Microsoft, and the night before I said yes to Robbie, John Riccitiello and the head of HR at that time had hauled me out for dinner to try to convince me to say no to Microsoft and to join EA – it was too late as I'd made a commitment to Robbie. Then Riccitiello came back and introduced the new label structure – I wouldn't have come to EA in the previous structure, it would make no sense. But my combination of sports experience with Reebok and Patrick and then obviously the ability to leverage that with my branding… and I love brands, and I love brands that are powerful, and linking the two – videogames and sports – together was an obvious attraction for me; as was getting back to the Bay area which I love.
So it became a very emotional six weeks, because we've got to sell the house, I've got to tell Robbie, I've got to tell Bill Gates, I've got to tell Ballmer, Xbox is firing on all cylinders – and I just kept saying no, it's not going to work, and in the end Riccitiello to his credit really painted a compelling picture of where the company was going, what I could do – what I'd be allowed to do with EA Sports and I decided okay, I'm going to do it.
It was unfortunate because as this was going on the Red Ring of Death story broke and so for better or worse the belief was that I'd been pushed out because of the hardware problems – that was not the case at all. But it was unfortunate timing. And then… I said yes in mid-June and still had E3 to get through, and in fairness to Microsoft I was already an EA employee while on stage with Rockband as head of Xbox – I wasn't an official EA employee, but I'd said yes to EA. Microsoft knew I was leaving and we made an agreement that my movement would be a material event to both companies, so we kept it all under wraps, didn't tell anybody. The only people who knew were Bill Gates, Robbie and Steve Ballmer at the Microsoft end. I did the press conference for Microsoft, I did three solid days of PR - the last interview was N'Gai Croal, he didn't know it then. The plan all along, which we'd worked with Microsoft and EA PR was to announce the following Monday – and that was kind of a bomb shell for Monday morning – I'm out of there.
And I look back now – it's only ten months ago, it seems like a lifetime ago. It was a tough time, it was hard to leave, it always ends up being much more difficult than you ever thought it would be – because I knew, literally, a thousand people by name, I was the face of the platform, then all of a sudden I'm gone. And I felt bad because a) I didn't want people to think I was fired, because I wasn't and b) I didn't want my team there to think I was jumping ship because of the hardware problems, which I wasn't. It was for personal and family reasons and the fact that I really relished the opportunity to get back into the sports side of things and then be able to apply videogame experience… it was the only job, no other job would have tempted me.