Xbox One: the state of play, according to Microsoft

October 2nd, 2013, 21:07 Posted By: wraggster

In the new issue of Edge magazine we take an in-depth look at how Microsoft turned Xbox One from a crisis console into a contender. As part of that feature, we spoke to Ken Lobb, Microsoft Studios’ partner creative director, to get a sense of what the platform holder’s policy reversals mean for developers and Microsoft’s position in the next gen race. Here’s what he said.Xbox One now works offline, but is there a presumption from the studios that you’re working with that generally people will be online?Today we’ve got 40 million people on Live, or something like that, and I’ve been at Microsoft now for over 11 years. I worked on Project Gotham 2, I was there when MechAssault shipped, I was there basically when Live came up on [the original] Xbox. And ever since then, we’ve been making games that are online. I’m old school, I started learning how to play games from the arcade [and] I want to play with people. So Live is important to me. Playing online is important to me. I build games that are going to be fun for people to play online.So your teams can still produce the same games the same way they always do?Yes. If you think about Killer Instinct, it’s unique in that we’re shipping it with six characters and then the other two come after. And if someone’s never connected? First of all, it’s a digital game so if you’re never connected you can’t get it anyway. It’s no difference to [my being] in Germany where I don’t have wireless in my room: I can’t play Clash Of Clans! So what did I do? I played a whole bunch of Plants Vs Zombies 2. So it’s like, yes, the game will run if you’re not connected but we’re going to refine it, ship new stuff and it’s going to be good, so connect! The box will even update silently in the middle of the night. So you will never see a Title Update. Ever.And if you’re not always online?Let’s say you’re only playing Killer Instinct offline and six months later you connect: you’re going to have to download that stuff before you can play with it. You can still play the version without the download but I just felt, as a developer, that I got a bunch of toys that I get to play with. And one of those toys is connected. And one of the new toys is connected and seamlessly updating. Connected to cloud computing? Yes, thank you. That’s powerful. That’s my perspective.

http://www.edge-online.com/news/xbox...-to-microsoft/

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