NEWS - Thursday, April 19, 2001
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Ed Fries Interview
The guys over at Msxbox have scored an interview with Microsofts director of first-party titles for the Xbox platform, Ed Fries. We had the chance to meet Ed Fries (pronounced "Frees" and not "Fries") at the first Fanstock that took place last year and we were really impressed with his presentation of the XBOX (although they could never get it to work on the TV DOH!) and the plan, which hasnt changed that much since last April. The interview is worthy of a looksee and of course the usual blurblage to get the mood going.
MSXbox: How close were the games shown at Gamestock and TGS, in terms of graphics and what we should expect at launch?Ed Fries: I had a couple goals for Gamestock. First I wanted to show real games, not mocked up demos. Anyone can make a fancy video, but you shouldnt believe something is real until you can sit down and play it. Everyone got to play everything we showed. Second I wanted to show a broad range of great titles: Action with Halo, Character with Munch, Racing with Gotham, Sports with Fever and Amped, Adventure/RPG with Azurik and Nightcaster, Party with Fusion Frenzy. All the games looked great, but you have to remember that there is still roughly 6 months more work to do on them until they are ready to ship and they were shown on development kits with roughly half the final performance. In many cases we had placeholder art and animation and that will be substantially improved before the games are ready to go. Our frame rate isnt up to where we want it yet, and there are many months of balancing and optimization work to do. The bottom line is you aint seen nothing yet!
Source: http://www.msxbox.com/