Peter Moore on the "The Elite 8": Ways to Confront Elitism and Open Doors for Our Industry

I agree with it I guess.

Although I wouldn’t like to see gaming go completely mainstream. That would be terrible. But maybe open the doors to the mainstream (what MS is doing) but at the same time create games exclusively for us gamers. Obviously mainstream pays the bills. But having a console flooded with those types of games would ruin it for gamers.

In my opinion there should be a balance of casual and ‘hardcore’ games. Theres many definitions for ‘hardcore gamer’. But I’m using it here as a gamer who plays several hours a day regularly.

I really like the ‘garage designers’ idea. But not sure how it would work. I personally plan to be a gamer designer in the near future (starting low such as programmer or artist and work my way up to becoming a game designer).

And game development costs should definately be reduced. It costs developers and publishers millions of dollars. And from what I’ve seen, it’s because they demand extremely good graphics. I’ve seen casual gamers say "oh this game sucks. Look at the graphics" yet they play Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas which has terrible graphics for a PS2 game. Ha, I don’t know where I’m going with this. But I in my opinion, graphics and gameplay should be balanced. For example, Ninja Gaiden has beautiful graphics and great gameplay. That’s what I’m talking about! Yeah, it kinda went off-topic.

Anyways, Nintendo is doing a great job by reducing development costs for publishers/developers. Everyone seems to be accepting Wii even though it doesn’t have next-gen graphics. This is a step forward.

That’s what I think. MS is also doing a good job by attracting mainstream and gamers.

I must say, if Microsoft is going to follow this plan, I’m in for the long haul (which means beyond Halo 3)

How about "don’t promise what you’re not going to deliver"? What happened to user-created content on the 360, from gamer pics to themes to game content? None of it has become reality while there is a setting to allow/disallow downloading of it.

MS is awesome.  Where is Sony in these discussions?  Sony seems to be doing everything BUT attract gamers from all corners.  MS is really trying to expand the market and make games fun and playable for everyone, and I applaud them for that.  Though a lot of it is in their own best interests, it’s also in the best interests of everyone involved (publishers, developers, Sony, Nintendo, etc.).  I think it’s awesome MS got into the game market with their vision.  Their vision isn’t just "how many dollars can we squeeze out of the average person," but, "how can we make games for everybody?" and I like it.  

I agree with the 1st poster, too, though.  We can’t make all games for the masses.  Look at what happened to Oblivion.  It was dumbed down so that EVERYONE could enjoy it and now some of the hard-core Elder Scrolls fans are disappointed (myself included).  The problem now is that it sold so well that the next iteration may possibly be even more dumbed down and us original hard-core fans of the series will be left in the dust.  You can’t always just worry about reaching as many people as possible because that often leads to disaster *cough*EA*cough*.  

Look at music these days.  All of these new bands, all sounding much the same as the band before them, and hardly any of them last for more than 2 albums.  They release as much rubbish as anyone can stand as quickly as possible and then people get sick of them (DMX anyone?).  We can’t let publishers and devs become a bunch of EA’s.  EA is the DMX of the business.  A strange analogy, I know, but I like it!

Peter Moore makes some good points here. It’s a bit sad then, that Microsoft seems to do very little to put these issues into practice. Some issues:

- Why isn’t the Xbox SDK freely available to all, just like the Windows SDKs? Why all the secrecy? Currently, it’s impossible for small or hobbyist developers to get any feel at all for what is involved in creating a console game.

- User-created content? Currently, the 360 doesn’t support this in any way. PGR3 has recently added a photo mode, where users can upload there own in-game pictures, but it still is very, very rudimentary, and the results are not even viewable on the Xbox 360 itself (only on an external web site).

- Online gameplay on the 360 is still very family unfriendly. Verbal abuse in almost all online games is horrible, and "gaming zones" do not seem to have any effect at all.

As said by imaginedbug it would help a great deal if Microsoft would actually deliver on these issues, on which they have direct control…

- "Online gameplay on the 360 is still very family unfriendly."

- "User-created content? Currently, the 360 doesn’t support this in any way."

See, you basically answered your own questions as to why there isn’t more user-created content. If the players could add their own images, guess what would be the first thing you see when you go play online?

Obviously not supporting user-created content is also a good way to do business. Would you have bought one of those theme packs (or whatever they are called) if you could’ve just uploaded a few images instead.

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"Why isn’t the Xbox SDK freely available to all, just like the Windows SDKs? Why all the secrecy?"

This is What I like to rant about. Releasing the SDK doesn’t mean that 40 people could do solitaire and get it to XBLA – it means that 40 people could do solitaire and then submit it for microsoft who would test the game and then decide if they would like to have it in XBLA.

I appreciate the fact that this dialogue is taking place. Peter addressed a few facets of the industry that need to be said.