J Allard just wrapped up his keynote. It was a pep talk more than anything else; an attempt to raise the game developing community into pioneers of the upcoming Hi Def Revolution. Allard spent the entire speech talking about three topics:
1) Hi Def TV
2) "Hi Def communication" (i.e. always online)
3) Customization.
On the last point Allard said that today's kids customize themselves with tattoos of the products they like. I didn't like where this was going. Luckily he spared us the images of Windows XP tattoos and launched right into a declaration…the next gen of games would need to take full advantage of the gamer's need to customize his experience.
He brought up the ringtone business as an example of how kids want to have their own personality shine through in the products they buy. He clearly feels strongly that gamers want to leave their unique mark on the game. Putting aside images of Junior weeing on his Halo 3 disc, I think he means that next gen games need to let you bring everything digital you own into the gaming experience. So you can send an order into an ongoing game with your PC, follow up on the order with the console and check status on your cell phone. Allard even ran a clip of James Cameron, who revealed that his next film will be produced in tandem with a game. The game will affect the film and vice versa. He wouldn’t elaborate, but it sounds intriguing.
Allard also spoke of a wireless console, which makes us think they may very well be working on a way to get the console to connect to your television wirelessly. We’ll see. It sounds like something that would confuse people more than anything else. What are the options of getting to the TV wirelessly? The HD card being built into some TVs? I don’t know enough on the subject to speculate so I’ll leave it to you!
Allard’s most interesting comments centered around the inevitability of the HD era. He thinks HD TV will transform our expectations of what we should see in every medium. Not only will things need to be clearer, they’ll need to be more complex, more revealing. Allard’s tone was “if we don’t step up, the day will pass us by.” It’s a good point, though I’m not sure people’s embrace of HD will be quite this massive in time for the next-gen consoles. But, of course, I blog. I don’t get paid millions to study the market.
He spoke to his audience well, too. He mentioned the XNA dev tools that will let workflow and content get managed better as the games get more complex. This is a theme amongst the console makers (as I’ll touch on in my CELL piece coming up later). If the next gen is going to be “higher def” then it will be an incredibly difficult business to manage. Hopefully, the MS tools will work as advertised. Oh, and he mentioned that 3000 next-gen dev kits have been shipped so far to developers around the world.
When he got to the “hardware” topic you could hear cameras turning on around the hall. But there was a collective mumble when Allard said he couldn’t reveal anything. “We’re saving it for E3.” Bah.
He did turn on the hype-talk. A terraflop of computing power. Designed for the HD consumer. Get rid of all the wires (there it is again. hmmmm). He touted the hardware as everything devs could possibly want; refined and manageable power. “It’s more Bruce Lee, than Brute Force,” he said. Both games sucked, so he might have wanted to avoid that analogy.
Then he launched into the UI theme. Easy UI is essential if we’re going to be getting all this new content. He pretty much summed up the features we mentioned in the post from earlier today about the new Live! features. But he showed us what it looked like, and it looks pretty smooth. He showed off the next-gen Forza game. It looks amazing, needless to say. He brought up a menu that allowed him to do just about anything. Chat, buy an upgrade (yeah, for real money), listen to music that fits the game — all in a clean interface that was decidedly Apple-looking in its elegance. The menu is called Xbox Guide and it’s clear they’ve put a lot of effort into it. Indeed, Allard said they’ve been working on it for years.
The micotransaction element is especailly intriguing. The ramifications of a massively multiplayer game where the company can control the sale of digital elements is a real Holy Grail.
Then Allard ended with a little walk down memory lane, where he recalled the Atari days and looked off to the future. As people got up to leave, he sat them back down with “OH! One more thing!” Turns out they had 1000 Samsung HDTVs to give away. Each of us had color passes handed to us when we entered. I got black. There was also yellow and blue. We were told that there would be a Forza race where one color would win. The screen lit up and the Hi Def race began. My precious black made a last minute surge that had me rolling in dreams of HD loveliness. But, alas, the yellow car cheated and won. Bah!
A good speech. I expected no less. Whether any of it ends up being true/correct is another matter. A lot of grist for the mill, though. Chew on it. My huge takeaways are microtransactions and the new Guide. What intrigues you?
