e talked to two of the most outspoken voices on the Xbox 360 squad, Peter Moore and J Allard, about brand new Xbox 360 details, what games will be ready for the launch window, more information on the Marketplace, backwards compatible games, the Halo movie, and if the Revolution controller is a threat.

Game Informer:  So why didn’t you announce the launch lineup yet?

Peter Moore, corporate VP of worldwide marketing and publishing:  Because there isn’t one yet.  What we will probably do is give out a list of candidates for launch.  Launch titles are typically confirmed about a month out.  I’m wracking my brain trying to think of any console that announced its launch titles two months before its release.  Right now, I can tell you the three first party titles which are PGR 3, Kameo and Perfect Dark Zero.  Third party, you will have to talk to them, I do not make announcements on their behalf.  The games aren’t finished.  I can tell you right now that I’m guessing.

GI:  You said that there are 200 titles in development right now?

Moore:  Yes.

GI:  How long?

Moore:  I’ve got visibility on titles for 2008.  Primarily first party but third party as well.  What they do is submit concepts and then the concept is approved.  Then they move forward to preproduction.  Then they go to green light and production starts.  Some of the bigger role playing games can take two and a half years and we’re already working on some of those.  So I have a pretty good idea of what’s going on all the way to holiday of 2007.  You know, what it might look like game point of view.  Now with business here, it may slip or get accelerated forward.  But it’s like the launch lineup thing, you just don’t know.

GI:  Two of the big questions were launch lineup and then what games would be ready for backwards compatibility.  Can you give us any kind of list for the day one titles?  When will we find those out?

Moore:  You have all heard this before I’m sure, but we are working on a software emulation that we have built that is had to hand combat game by game by game.  Each game is emulated and you know the issue with the GPU and the CPU.  We will probably be in a position in about two weeks to give you a list and that list will go up on Xbox.com and it will get updated as more and more games get through certification.

GI:  So out of the box, some games will be playable, that’s what you’re saying?

Moore:  Yeah.  And that list will grow and grow and grow.

GI:  Will you be charged for that in Marketplace or will that be free?

Moore:  There will just be an auto-update that you may not even be aware that happens.  Say Crimson Skys becomes backwards compatible.  We will post an update on Xbox.com.  We may even set up an email alert for people who are interested enough.  Bottom line, you will start seeing more concrete information in two weeks.  We will post a list.  The guys continue to pound through these games and the emulation is working well.  After launch, we will continue to do it.  Until consumers show lack of interest, then we will move on.

GI:  If you look at the market and this holiday season, there’s not really a black hole like Halo or Grand Theft Auto to suck everybody’s money and hurts all of the other games.

Moore:  You think that’s healthy or unhealthy?

GI:  Well I think that is what I am asking you, you know, is that good for Xbox 360 as far as the launch goes?  Is that an advantage or disadvantage?

Moore:  It depends on who you are.  The gamer loves things like that.  If you remember what happened with Vice City a few years ago, everyone bought that.  And with Halo 2 last year, it just soaked the blood of the option.  You could argue that Xbox 360 could be that spike.  You know we’re going to sell out day one.  You’ve seen all of the games here.  All retail is worried about is matching their comp sales every year.  They were worried that we did not have enough units but now they know our allocation and they are pleased.  The games are coming together great.

GI:  In terms of say Nintendo, you have Mario, their all-star that everyone knows.  At this point, I think your lineup is kind of across the board and you have a lot of things for a lot of people.  Perfect Dark you picked to be the big hit out of the whole thing but there’s not really like a standout title in the whole thing.  There’s not really a standout title anywhere in the market.

Moore:  So are you wondering if 25 great titles are better than one spectacular huge title?

GI:  Yeah.

Moore:  I think as long as retail sells and consumers are happy, we’re selling a lot of stuff and you guy have a lot to write about.  And who knows, one will pop up.  Don’t underestimate Kameo.

GI:  Is that your dark horse?

Moore:  I think it’s bigger than a dark horse.  You saw me pimping Kameo six months ago and the game is spectacular.  I love it because I can take it home and play it with my daughter.  There are not a lot of games I can sit at home and play with my 13 year old daughter and both of us can have fun.  The game is so rich and so deep.  I can’t even think how you could demo Kameo and do it justice in 25 minutes.  It’s not like PGR where you "zoom" race around and there you are.  Kameo is so rich and deep that it would be selling it short to try and do anything in less than 20 minutes.

GI:  My question is, now that you’ve got the whole movie thing going down now and with Peter Jackson and all of that and you got CAA involved and after you ran around with the script, were you pushing to get someone of that caliber involved or did Peter approach you guys with it?

Moore:  We knew that Halo was hot, clearly.  You know the story that we then said, work with the Bungie guys.  Yeah a movie would be great but anything that is less than complimentary to Halo would be a disaster.  With most video game movies, we think this just isn’t working for me.  I can’t think of one.  Even Doom now.  People are starting to worry and the Rock and stuff.  We were only going to do it if we could protect the Halo universe and the script writer, Alex Garland who did 28 Days Later.  Great movie.  He wrote The Beach and is a Halo freak.  So one of the greatest experiences of my life was meeting Alex for the first time, sitting back in a room with a bunch of Bungie guys.  Now that is an intimidating experience.  He did a spectacular job.  We said that we will write the check, which is unusual because we want to control the screenplay. 

Then of course, we pissed everybody off in Hollywood by sending the Master Chief to sit in the waiting rooms with the script but it was a lot of fun.  Then Universal and Fox came through and are great partners.  And of course, Jackson and Universal for Lord of the Rings and King Kong.  So we wanted some level of creative control to make sure only the best of the best would make it through.  About three weeks ago, we found out that Peter was a Halo 2 fanatic.  When a guy like Jackson talks about not being able to wait to go home after making King Kong to play Halo 2.  Jackson was looking for a break after King Kong.  He has not stopped since day one of Lord of the Rings.  I mean look him, he lost 80 pounds.  It was important for us to use Weta Digital, a company that can compete with ILM.  It has to be good.  You had Tolken fans that would have ripped him to shreds if Lord of the Rings turned out bad and you know how Halo Nation is.  If you screw with that story, they're going to be pissed.  You trust your baby to Peter Jackson.  Here it is.  Fox, Universal, Wingnut Films, Weta Entertainment and Microsoft.  There a lot of ego there.  Yes it is complex, but in the end, everybody loves Halo.

GI:  Would you hold Halo 3 for the same time as the launch for the movie?

Moore:  Halo what?  What are you talking about?

GI:  How would you compare this launch with other launches that you have been involved with?

Moore:  The one? (laughs)  With the Dreamcast, when people look back on it, the content dried up too quickly.  In February of 2000, Crazy Taxi shipped and NFL 2k shipped but there was not very much variety.  EA never came to the platform then the PS2 steam-rolled in at that time.  We learned a lesson.  We had a great launch line up.  Soul Caliber, Power Stone, Trick Style, Ready to Rumble, Sonic, NBA 2k, NFL 2k.  It was a great line-up.  This is a better line-up.  But that line-up came, we said great and sold 1.8 million units at Christmas and then it was like “Now what?”  But here, I have visibility for 200 games all the way to 2008 and that will continue to grow, grow, and grow.  I think that’s a huge difference.

GI:  We heard that John Carmack likes the 360, we heard that at Quakecon.  Do you think more traditional PC developers will fell the same way?

Moore:  Dev-love.  I have heard this from a ton of people like Bill Gates.  We help the best that we can.  Tools, advance technology, group onsite helping you get up and running.  You talk to any developer that develops for Xbox, PlayStation and GameCube and who gives you dev-love, it’s us.  It’s what we do.  The fundamental business platform for Microsoft is to build a platform that companies can build applications on.  The games business is no different.  You invest billions of dollars to the divisions of the EA’s and Ubisoft’s of this world.  The middleware, the tools and the onsite teams that are like SWAT teams around the world.  If you have a problem getting on Xbox Live, we’re there to fix it.  When John Carmack says that there are more tools on the Xbox 360 than the PC, it’s a big frickin’ deal to me.  I have a great deal of respect for what John Carmack does.

GI:  Will a worldwide launch limit your numbers in any specific regions?

Moore:  It will put me into an early grave is what it will do. (laughs)  Not really.  Because, what we have done is say if there are 25,000 retailers around the world, what do they need?  What’s the stock level, make sure they get all their games, get their replication going, get their localization going.  The localization part frankly is the biggest issue.  Here in Europe, we are dealing with 16 countries, all in the same day.  Different languages, different certifications, point of sales in English, French, German, Spanish, Italian.  You get to a launch quantity but then every week you replenish.  So instead of drying up for a month or two months like we have seen in the past.  So every week, our retailers will know that they will have this amount coming next week.  And the week after and so on.  We are going to be on air freight for a long time.

GI:  Can you say what the percentage of the systems are….

Moore:  An overwhelming percentage is the Premium SKU.  But it moves everyday.  I can tell you it’s over 80%, but tomorrow that might change.

GI:  Was there ever a worry about confusing the customer with the two different SKUs?

Moore:  You know, I’m the guy that goes an looks at 25 different TVs at Best Buy yet people think that video games are so stupid that they can't look at that SKU and that SKU and say that’s for me.  The two SKU thing has been part of our strategy for years.  We do a lot of talking to consumers.  We talked to retailer a year ago and showed them the two SKUs and they get it.  It’s confusing because it’s different.  Our industry has only ever shipped one SKU and because we are doing things differently, people are confused.  But I have talked to consumers and have yet to find anyone who is confused and they clearly understand the difference.

GI:  How many accessories will be available at launch?

Moore:  18 peripherals.

GI:  What about faceplates?

Moore:  There will be 15 faceplates, I think.

GI:  The first party titles seem to look better than the third party titles in terms of graphics and features.  Like King Kong and FIFA look just a little better than the Xbox versions.  Why is that?

Moore:  Well you’re looking at games that are running on Beta not on final hardware so that difference over the next six to nine months will continue to grow as developers start to get used to the hardware.  Rare has been working on those games for years so it’s an unfair advantage.  The gap between first party and third party will start to equalize.  The first party games have had the dev kits for a lot long than the third parties.  Lets talk again after you see it at launch on final hardware.

GI:  Square Enix.  Final Fantasy XI.  The announcement was very cool, but will we hear anything else?

Moore:  Yeah.  But I will let them talk to you. Not me.  The real thing that brings Xbox and Square Enix together is the vision of what games should be.  There is not a publisher that has a better view of what gaming should look like in three years other than Square Enix.

***