Peter Moore: I hear the question often - Is boxing dead? My answer is always an emphatic no.
Is the sport challenged by declining interest, a lack of bona fide superstars (sorry Manny) and the growth of mixed martial arts? Absolutely. Does the sport miss the dynamic legends of the past, like Ali, Frazier, Foreman and Holmes? Of course. As a lifetime fight fan, I will always remember as a young boy listening to the big fights from America on a transistor radio under my pillow at night. Those were the days when there was no bigger global sporting event than a world heavyweight championship fight. While title fights still routinely generate tens of millions of pay-per-view dollars and are watched by millions, the sport of boxing clearly is not the cultural fixture it once was. But, let me be clear, boxing’s not dead.
To celebrate the Xbox 360's 20th anniversary, Eurogamer sits down with former Xbox boss Peter Moore to reflect on the console's creation and puglistic launch.
Part 2 tomorrow. Good read.
One could make a case that Xbox Live was the quarterback. Getting the ball into the hands of millions of players. Connecting their community. Quite the time. Plus we had the push to be this all in one entertainment unit. Everyone had to evolve, in a hurry.
I was a ps3 fanboy back then but boy do I miss the 360 and the competition, the games, the fun that xbox gave.
I unfortunately could only focus on one console because I was but a child with no money back then lol. What a generation that was.
Good gen, I agree.
A case could be made that Xbox 360 made PS3 better over time. Got a unified friend list, in-game messaging, trophy support. I forget who did cloud saves first, but that got patched in. Prices came down, features went up.
Wasn’t all roses mind you (the online pass experiment, paid online), but the positives probably outweigh the negatives.
It’s too bad they didn’t focus on making games instead of paying for IP to not be on PS. I have always bought every console and didn’t care about competition between them until MS showed they were bad for gaming and consoles. I bought the original Xbox and 360. If MS would have taken a different approach I’d still be playing on Xbox.
They had no choice though. OG xbox sold 25 mil? Who is going to develop an exclusive for your new console for free? There is no money in that. Did what they had to do to compete against goliath Sony
I remember xbox was actively inciting the console war. Every xbox magazine was chuck full of console war propaganda. They didn’t do themselves a lot of good by not building games internally. Halfway through that gen 360 stopped having exclusives because with PlayStation install base rising it became too expensive for MS to keep buying game exclusivity.
Absolutely! And this was their down fall come around 2011 after the Gears 3 launch. There was nothing. Bungie was gone. They kept Halo but didn't have the talent to keep Halo what it always was.
They kept Gears ip, but lost Epic's relationship and didn't have the talent to keep gears what it was.
MS was eventually found out that they severely lack good internal development management and talent. It is expensive to keep 3rd party exclusives going while your competitor continues to grow as well.
Combine that with the 2013 xbox one launch and this is how we get here today. Xbox turning into a publisher with their tails between their legs.
Microsoft definitely started it tho.
i remember it well; all the attacks in interviews, on twitter etc.
and then the infamous e3 conference came and they introduced the kinect amd wkth all the nonsense they thought people wanted and were immediately humbled by fans.
Fight Night Champion servers fail every weekend, breaking ranked matches & OWC features. Players resort to unranked custom matches as EA stays silent.
"If Microsoft had the choice, would they make hardware? No"
Gonna be honest, Microsoft just lost and there's no one there to replace them. Yet? Until then, Microsoft, please keep fighting on the hardware front. Every little bit helps. Not interested in your subscription plans, but Sony can't be left without any competition.
It's funny because if Valve decided to go all on in with a console rather than the Steam Machine bulls*** they did in 2015 they could have really provided some competition and with the way Microsoft is going now, they could have effectively replaced them given the chance.
Free online play, having your PC Steam library on your console and being able to download any game you have, the exact same level of mod support PC offers, games like GMod or the Black Mesa fan remake of Half Life that you can't get on consoles, Steam sales etc, they had a lot of options to really put Sony and Microsoft in a tough position. Not to mention you have their games as exclusives and whatever else they make if they really push making games again.
And a good push for more controller support on traditional KB/M games on PC as well.
Tbh I honestly don't think they could. PC players wouldn't be moving to a console and what's to tempt in PS players? They can play pretty much all if the games as it and the console would be at a likely much cheaper price point. Sure there's free online, but that's balanced by much cheaper games on PS (physical)
Maybe Sony doesn't need competition in the niche it has in the console market. Nintendo doesn't have competition in the corner it has carved out for itself... PC doesn't have competition because by nature, PC's are designed to be more powerful than consoles and PC gamers are expected to pay the premium required to do so. If someone else comes in, maybe it needs to be in a way that shakes up the market instead of just having another copycat that gives gamers within those respective markets something to fight about.
I agree, it’s about building the brand to a level that it becomes niche because the games on offer are unique and better than the competitors.
Microsoft had its mojo in the 360 era but lost it. All hopes on Perfect Dark and Fable now. They could build it back quickly but choose not to. Halo could be great. Flight Sim ‘24 could be great. Microsoft is done chasing losses with these franchises it seems though and would rather put its efforts into porting than making sure their own console is the best place to play. This after building their entire business model on subscriptions.
It’s hard to say M$ gives a crap about its fan base now, that’s their issue and why their “niche” is the casual series s player that pays their Gamepass sub and only plays Fortnite
Everyone needs competition. It's what drives innovation and prevents price gouging and the like in the market. Why would Sony put out better hardware or better software features if they didn't have to compete with Xbox? Do you think we got NVMe SSDs because Sony just felt like doing it? No, they needed an edge over Microsoft that was more than just computing power. It was competition that forced Sony to abandon the PS3 cell architecture, which caused issues for developers regardless of the benefits. Now developers are all operating on the same x86 architecture and saving developers time and money.
What competition?!
Microsoft was never a competitor once they gave up on third party contracts… and even then, that was not competing… that was just baiting Sony into the “war”.
Microsoft “sold” themselves as something..
But never delivered.
Over a decade without one new AAA game.
Fake “power” fights with their pieced together generic pc parts.
So what is this “competition” you speak of?
Sony delivered groundbreaking games before Microsoft, they will after Microsoft just becomes a publisher.
Microsoft got what they wanted…
A leash on Sony per the electrical engineering front to monopolizing computing.
That is and has been their only goal.
Are you a physical only gamer? I'm trying to figure out why some are against gamepass.
PS you keep your games forever as long as you’re subbed versus Gamepass where what you can only access what they choose and games go away controlling when you play.
M$ started pay for online. This is a move to pad bottom line not make a healthy industry.
Yes it hurts physical games release, gaming culture stores like GameStop too, like a million reasons Gamepass is not good for the industry, I could go on…
Should we talk about how they bought up half the industry and gutted staff?
I don't want someone telling me when I can play a game I want to play (for third-party games) nor do I tend to play games on Game Pass. Avowed is a rare item on Game Pass I'll play and I just bought it. Now I can play it whenever without having to go in, resub, play it, and remind myself to unsubscribe when I'm done. I'll also save myself more money in the long run sense I'll play it over a few months or again down the road and I will have paid just a single price and not $15/month whenever I want to play it.
Microsoft was never competition there a trillion dollar company. They have no competition thats the problem. The west has always sucked at consoles. Thats why the west had lost every console war
Yeah, no. Microsoft took away a massive chunk of PS market reach with the 360. Literally the definition of competition. Sony still hasn't fully recovered from the market reach loss.
because no ones participating for a decade, knly ms is.
and the lost the last two gens
The corporate greedy company entered the gaming industry and somehow convinced gamers they were a gaming company that cared about games. Now we are where we are and people still root for M$ for some reason. I get that there aren’t many choices but this company is the one that is most likely to put out incomplete games that lacks quality control and they’ve proven that.
I’m all about healthy competition, but M$ moves to make money any means necessary, they hype what they know is trash, while Sony and Nintendo at least try to push the medium forward.
Sony doesn't need any competition. Lately they seem to destroying themselves without it.
I don’t like this gen as much as the rest but compare to other competitions they are doing pretty good. And they are killing their main rival in hardware sales.
Just because both of us don’t like the direction doesn’t mean they are destroying themselves.
They are actually doing pretty good compare to other companies right now.
Pretty good? Dude don't bend a knee for any corporation. They are trash this gen. If you are happy with this gen then you truly have blinders on
@inurfoxhole
When I said we both don’t like the direction they are going and I don’t like this gen as much what do you think I’m implying?
That they are doing good this gen for me as a gamer?
Im saying in a business aspect, they are doing good. No where near “destroying” themselves.
You can deny all you want but maybe you have your blinders on or your just narrow minded.
All I hear about is UFC fights nowadays.
Although I dont watch either.... so Idk.
is you get a great boxing game with every new gen. Fight night 3 was amazing, i couldnt stop playing it and all were getting now is sequels with the same game mechanics with gimmiks like this new story mode. the next big leap will come next gen.
the problem was EA doing what they always do...BUY UP THINGS to create a monopoly and stop competition.in this case,the boxers names,likeness,etc.
same as they did with football.the same thing would have happened if they would have gotten the nba and mlb license.
i'm american but big business american companies seem to like to lock up sh!t and ruin things.
EA ruined boxing games because due to lack of competition we're stuck with minor gameplay updates every year