MS Touts Gameplay Over Graphics

Highlights from our video interview with Xbox-man J Allard, though we've heard that three out of four doctors recommend you watch the whole thing too.

In the next hardware generation Microsoft will no longer have the most powerful box on the block. If the raw specs and early footage are to be believed, Sony has the upper hand over the company's new console with PlayStation 3. Perhaps it's no surprise then that J Allard, the man behind Xbox 360, feels the end is near for the obsession with looks.

"You don't judge don't just a book by its cover, an album by its single, or a film by its trailer," Allard told Kikizo during an interview at E3. "Graphics is just one component in gameplay."

"Focussing in on graphics is actually not giving much credit to the medium itself. Gameplay is becoming a lot more important."

It's a sentiment that resonates with many that have grown tired of developers' and publishers' seeming insistence that their games are good just because they look pretty. And, as Allard pointed out, it's not always the good looking games that do well, citing series such as Grand Theft Auto and Pokémon as proof.

Allard says the Halos are in a small group of games that were both graphically gorgeous and commercially successful

Part of Microsoft's arsenal is the next instalment in the Halo series. Microsoft president Bill Gates recently told Time magazine that the game would be ready in time for the launch of the PlayStation 3, but Allard insists that developer Bungie will get all the time it needs to finish the game.

The reason for this is simple: Halo 3 is just one small part in a broad vision for Microsoft and Xbox going forward.

"The game industry today is doing very well from a numerical point of view, and that's because we obsolete ourselves so quickly and because our entertainment experiences cost $50," Allard said, referring to the four-to-five-year hardware cycle that currently dominates the video game world.

For Allard, though, that's not good enough - he wants more. Much more.

During Microsoft's pre-E3 press conference, Allard spoke of a future where games would be on equal footing with TV, music and movies - a future where a billion people would call themselves gamers. And the company is hoping to do this by expanding how people interact with games.

"For me," Allard said, "it's really about the potential of growing the medium and getting the medium to be more mainstream."

Microsoft will launch the Xbox 360 towards the end of 2005. Check out our full interview with J Allard for all the juicy leak-denials.

Alex Wollenschlaeger
Editor, Kikizo Games