Xbox Live’s general manager Marc Whitten might not have been willing to spill too many beans on the upcoming Live Arcade release of Rare’s classic Nintendo 64 shooter Perfect Dark, but according to him, “the team is working on it, it’s up and running, and it’s already fun. It’s definitely looking very good and I think it’s going to be a great classic.”
Perfect Dark stars secret agent Joanna Dark as she battles galactic conspiracies in 2023 America. The Xbox Live Arcade version will run at 60 frames per second and in 1080p high definition, and word is that a running demonstration was on show at E3 behind closed doors. Joanna Dark has already appeared on the Xbox 360, in the console launch title Perfect Dark Zero.
In an exclusive interview with Gameplanet, Whitten spoke about social networking on Xbox Live, Arcade games and the future of digital distribution. Whitten said part of his focus was to ensure that the six million Xbox Live visitors each day continued coming back to the service.
“It has always been our ambition to create this community of people playing together and having these great experiences. We have 20 million people on the Xbox Live service, and six million people that return every day, and we saw this future that was possible, and what’s cool now is that I think we’re in that future.“
Whitten said adding Facebook and Twitter functionality to Xbox Live was a natural progression of the service.
“Live is the largest social network in the living room and now when you marry that with Facebook, it takes it to the next level, and starts to expand those social aspects well beyond gaming.
"Part of where we went last year with NXE (New Xbox Experience) was about creating a system where we could add functionality and features at a much faster rate than before. This is the first wave of innovation on top of that. This has been part of our plans for some time, and how we take what has been successful with games, and take it to new forms of entertainment - and beyond.”
Asked if the new social networking features would attract non-gamers to Live, Whitten hoped it would.
“I have two goals with Live. First one, I want everyone in the house to fight over the Xbox, and secondly, I want Xbox to be input #1 on the TV. I want this to be the centre of entertainment in the home where you can do things that you’ve never been able to do before, because connected together we can have a truly magical experience. I think our core gamers are going to love that, but yeah, I believe it will be something that a new audience will find appealing.”
New Zealand was one of a handful of countries announced at E3 this year that will be added to Live’s Movies on Demand service, where 1080p High Definition movies can be watched as they stream to your Xbox 360 console, not requiring you to wait until you have downloaded a movie. (Microsoft’s own press material says a connection speed of 8 Mbps is required for instant viewing at 1080p and 5.1 surround sound, but the service will take into account varying broadband speeds using multibit streaming to adjust the image quality to suit the user’s connection, so there are no interruptions to the movie they are watching.)
“The beauty of what we are doing is the instant 1080p technology. Everything starts instantly. In the old video market place you had to download the movie, and it often took longer to download the movie than watch it, which is not good. The beauty of broadband is that penetration is going up and speeds are going up, but it is a march of technology that will get richer and richer. All of the HD content will be just the best quality that you can get on your television. I can skip ahead and it is as if I was playing on a local disc, which is a huge, huge rule changer.”
While Whitten believes that digital content is the way of the future, he doesn’t think it will threaten Blu-ray or DVD. “I believe very strongly in the future of digital distribution, and the future of these digital experiences, but I don’t think it is as much of a competition as a lot of people who like to couch that conversation. I think about how we are going to create a lot of experiences that people have never had before.
“Take for example, the Live Party mode viewing functionality (where up to eight people can watch the same movie simultaneously together, wherever in the world they are). This is something that you can only do in the digital world and the social aspects of that, as everyone has to access the content at the same time.”
Whitten is clear what his focus is with Live and he’s not afraid to admit it: make the experience easier for people to enjoy.
“I want to make it easier for everyone to have social experiences that are magical in the living room. Live is much more about how to bring a living room alive and real friends together, whether in person or not. We’ve had the TV for 50 years but we’ve always been blocked out from the social aspect. To me the magic of Live is lowering the barriers and making it magical. I just don’t think people expect enough out of the entertainment in the living room. It should be simple to do these things.”
So, where does Whitten think the future is? “I believe if you look out five years in the living room, someone will have solved a way to get the best content, to find your friends, have these amazing experiences, where everyone watching Lost can participate actively, and not just watch impassively.
“We’ll look back on this world of passive entertainment of TV, and wonder why was it always so hard to do all these things that should have been so natural? At its core, people are just very social people and I think someone will do that in five years from now and I believe that Live is at the pole position to be that company.”
But despite all this talk of social networking and magical experiences, Whitten is still focused on providing the best gaming experience with Live, an important aspect of the service.
“I think we’ve been a leader in digital distribution since we launched Arcade and we have been focused on learning the experiences that people want. I think there has always been great quality on Arcade, but I now think that the range and palette of things is increasing. We’ll still see things like Geometry Wars, which is sort of simple, but also see beautiful things like Shadow Complex (a side-scrolling shooter game coming from Epic Games and Chair Entertainment).”
As part of the games focus, in August, Live will launch its Games on Demand service, where you’ll be able to purchase full games digitally at prices that will match retail. There will be 30 games at launch, then a new game added weekly, and here’s some good news: you’ll be able to purchase the games using a credit card as well as Microsoft points.
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