Andre Yoskowitz
26 Mar 2007 18:26
UK Xbox boss Neil Thompson has taken a verbal jab at Sony's PlayStation 3 by attacking the system’s hefty price tag and Blu-ray functionality.
Thompson also completely dismissed the idea that the 360 was inferior because of the PlayStation 3's in-built Blu-ray drive.
"Do I want to make people pay £200 extra for a machine with discs that have storage space I don’t need? My answer’s no, I don’t need to do that today," Thompson said. "And I don’t think I’m going to need to do that for quite a while."
Thompson argued that the 360 is more flexible and allows users to upgrade at their choosing, not have to pay extra for a format they may not care about. He also believed that flexibility was the key to the console's success in the future. "I’m not sure the market has moved to high definition [movies] yet," he said.
"And if and when it does, then the way that we’ve constructed the offering we’ve made means we’ll be able to go whichever way we want."
The inclusion of a Blu-ray drive in every stock PlayStation 3 is one of the reasons for its hefty price tag but it does allow you to play high definition movies right out of the box. You must buy an HD-DVD add-on to be able to play HD dvds on an Xbox 360.
Thompson had alot to say about the argument that the technology of a 360 was not up to par with that of the PlayStation 3 and the fact that Sony officials claim that Blu-Ray is necessary to give game makers freedom of space.
"I’d be really surprised if technologically, and we’re a software company, we couldn’t get to a situation where we can deliver whatever content we need to," He added that "improved compression techniques and the ability to deliver content via Xbox Live would negate any disc storage issues in the future."
"This is about the architecture of the hardware. With the PS3 you’ve got a big, heavy truck that requires a big, heavy engine. With Xbox you’ve got a much more nimble box that uses software in the architecture of the box in a much more nimble way."
He concluded, "That’s the difference between us and PlayStation - we didn’t have a need to develop a really complicated engine to get Blu-ray players into the market. We wanted to deliver HD gaming. Judge us on what we’ve done."
Source:
Gamesindustry.biz