Edge Online hat eine Aussage von J.Allard bezüglich der Kritik an der Xbox360, wegen der (fehlenden) Festplatte, veröffentlicht.
Allard sagte, das richtige zu tun bedeutete manchmal den harten Weg zu nehmen. Es gibt sicherlich Entwickler die enttäuscht sind, das die Xbox360 nicht zwangsläufig eine Fesplatte haben wird.
Er wünschte es könnten Festplatten mit 4 Terrabyte Speicherplatz verbaut werden und die Konsolen inkl. TV an den Verbraucher verschenkt werden. Aber letzten Endes versucht man einfach ein Geschäft zu führen und Geld zu verdienen.
Allard erwartet, das man in fünf Jahren zurückblicken wird und sagen wird "Es war die richtige Entscheidung", dem Konsumenten wählen zu lassen ob er eine Konsole mit Festplatte oder ohne haben will.
Original Text:
Microsoft responds to 360 hard drive questions Previous | Next
jallard.jpgIn an interview during Microsoft’s X05 conference this week, Xbox 360 platform chief J Allard has addressed questions surrounding the company’s decision to ship two versions of its upcoming hardware – one with a hard drive, one without.
Faced with the suggestion that Microsoft might have let down developers by removing the guarantee of a hard drive in every box, Allard said: “I don’t know who we’ve let down. There isn’t a game on 360 that you can’t play without a hard drive, so I think that’s a good thing for consumers. We’ve made a commitment to broadening the audience, and while I think most of our energy here at X05 is about the hardcore, over time we’re really setting the stage for making this a bigger category for everybody. So from the developer point of view you have the best tools and the commitment of the most well-resourced company in the world going worldwide with this product and saying that we want to grow the audience. So that seems like a win for developers – I’m not sure who’s supposed to be disappointed.”
It was put to Allard that Saint’s Row developer Volition had expressed difficulty in realising some of its ambitions for the project since the removal of the hard drive from the equation (citing issues with streaming and caching), to which he responded: “Sometimes doing the right thing means doing the hard thing. Are there developers who are disappointed? Yeah, sure. I wish there was a hard drive and I wish there were four terabytes of memory; I wish it were free to consumers and I wish we could put one in every TV set – there are a lot of wishes that I have but at the end of the day we’re trying to run a business, and you have to make those trade-offs. It was a difficult one – I was the biggest fan of the hard drive and its potential, but the problem is that we sold 22million Xbox consoles and 5million, maybe 10million just don’t care about it. But we paid for it. So who pays for it this time? We can either ask the gamer to pay for it, pay for it ourselves, or prove that there’s enough value in it and have the gamer say ‘I want to pay for it’ – I think that’s the right model.
“A lot of people have said: ‘This is really confusing – you have different configurations and blah, blah, blah’, and I’m like: what consumer electronics business in the world has three manufacturers, three brands that each make one thing that doesn’t change for seven years? The answer is none. You go and buy a TV, I guess it’s confusing but I like the choice. You buy a cellphone, it could be confusing but I like the choice. Consumers like choice, and it’s a very pro-consumer move on our part to say, ‘We’ve got two configurations of system that’ll be launching in Europe and if they’re not right, we have the flexibility to go and change it’. You buy a TV and it’s not progressive scan, you’re screwed – you made the choice and you can’t upgrade. You buy an iPod Shuffle and you want an iPod Photo, you’re screwed – you can’t upgrade. You bought a Mini Cooper and you want the Turbo, you’re screwed. You buy the Xbox 360 Core system, you can build up to the premium system and you won’t be left out of anything along the way. You can pace into this however you want, unlike any of the traditional categories.
“You know, being first you sometimes get some crap, and we’ve had some crap. But I think it’s very pro-consumer and very pro-developer, and I think that in five years everybody will look back and say that this was a very, very good move on our part to launch worldwide and to have the flexibility for consumers to decide on their products.”