Shack Interview: Microsoft's Scott Henson
At Game Developers Conference in San Jose, I got the chance to chat with Microsoft's product unit manager for its game technology group, Scott Henson. Scott explained a bit about what Microsoft is trying to do for developers with its XNA platform, and also shared why he's flattered by Sony, excited by Nintendo, and hoping to broaden the gaming audience. Check it out.
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Shack: Do you have any feedback or reactions to what Sony has been announcing over the past couple of days?
Scott Henson: Well I was in both the Nintendo keynote and the Sony keynote, and for what it's worth from a keynote perspective I really enjoyed the Nintendo keynote, it was fun. The Sony keynote, I just walked away very flattered.
Shack: Ouch!
Scott Henson: Well, you know, I did, I was thinking, "Wow!" You know, I've been working on Xbox Live for a long, long time, and when I first started people were like, "Unified service? On broadband? With voice? Are you insane?" We had these conversations and people would just look at us crosseyed, saying, "Are you crazy?" I left the keynote this week just thinking, "Wow, we've really fundamentally changed people's expectations of what a next generation console should do, including Sony."
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Shack: How will we be seeing the Dashboard improve on the 360?
Scott Henson: I don't think we've given an official date yet, but in the not so distant future you will see another update that will improve a lot of how stuff is sorted and shown in the Marketplace, just to make it more efficient. We're going to do a lot of nip and tuck cleanup work. One of the biggest things is the ability to download things in the background.
Shack: Thank you!
Scott Henson: Yeah, as an avid Marketplace downloader I can say hallelujah! I don't know what the official PR line is on the availability, but it's not that far away.
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thoughts?
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Will we see full game downloads now on the 360?
Pre launch: "OMG YES YES YES....ANYTHING YOU WANT IT TO DO"
Post Launch: "Well..... it IS possible but i don't think we'll be yadda yadda yadda...."
How about video and music downloads:
Pre-launch: "JUST YOU WAIT....EVERYTHING....ANYTHING....GURGLE GURGLE"
Post Launch: "well, i know video has been heavily requested...blah blah blah and we'll certainly look into that blah blah"
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(this might be common knowledge? but it's just my guess)
If I got a 360, I'd love to see 10$ -> 20$games which were you know, up to half a gb or something, kind of fun and basic, maybe even 30$ games? (duke nukem manhatten project?) abuse style games? etc... would be awesome.
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It's refreshing to read stuff like that instead of "their product's a joke, ours rocks!". Nintendo has been doing this for quite some time now and I'm glad to see Microsoft adopting a similar attitude. Professional and honest demenor wins out every time in my book.
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I wish more people would be able to do this within the three major companies.
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