Even more from Bill Gates on the 360 and the competition
We’ve covered several reports on Bill Gates right after the CES. Who wouldn’t? The man delivered the keynote speech, and even afterwards, he still had a lot to say about all things tech.
What follows is a few quotes from Bill Gates on the state of gaming at the moment. These were taken from the first part of Mercury News’ interview with Bill Gates. A lot of this information has been reported before, but since this is his actual words, you do get a better idea of what Bill was trying to express, and how he carried himself.
On the Xbox 360 Strategy:
ItÂ’s working perfectly. We wanted to be the guy with the small box that costs less. We wanted to have the most compelling or better than anyone elseÂ’s box. We wanted to have the most games. We wanted to play to our software strength, and tools and online. We wanted to get most respects, except for the online capability, we wanted to swap positions with Sony. We wanted to not be a year late, not be a big box, not be a more expensive box. How are we doing on that?
On Nintendo and what they’re doing:
Sony has always been our most direct competitor. Nintendo of course is a competitor. But look at the resolution you get with a controlled experience like that. Say to yourself, how in terms of using a game for a long period of time, what kind of accuracy and capability do you want? Look at the classic Nintendo positioning. Look at the graphics. Look at NintendoÂ’s execution in terms of online capability. We have this thing that nobody has ever seen before. When you say to your friend, hey letÂ’s play online, you say then you have to buy an Xbox. ThatÂ’s what 10 million people say. If you want to play online, get an Xbox. WeÂ’re not standing still. Look at what you saw today connecting up the world to the Windows PC. Do you expect Nintendo to rev up a team to create cross-device gaming and tool kits to develop those things? Not very likely. We clearly think that Nintendo did some things right.
On Sony, the Cell, and the Graphics:
They were going to have the Cell be the video processor. But they didnÂ’t know what they were doing. They said the Cell is the video processor. But they turned to Nvidia at the last minute, but Nvidia canÂ’t do embedded DRAM. Go look at the bandwidth problems. Go ask the guys running Â… now. They took their year and burned it by not having a decent CPU strategy and then turning to Nvidia at the last minute. ItÂ’s a very unusual thing. Those processors are isolated from each other.
…ItÂ’s just like pointing at the Xbox 1. We were 20 percent better. But it didnÂ’t matter. We were a year late, didnÂ’t have the best games. We had this bigger box. We did have online. We didn’t switch positions on that.
The sentence that Bill said that made the most sense to us? “If you want to play online, get an Xbox.” At the moment, and we stress, at the moment, given the XBLA traffic and the library of available multiplayer experiences, Bill’s statement can’t be more self-evident.
For the complete transcript of the interview, click the link below.
We’ve covered several reports on Bill Gates right after the CES. Who wouldn’t? The man delivered the keynote speech, and even afterwards, he still had a lot to say about all things tech.
What follows is a few quotes from Bill Gates on the state of gaming at the moment. These were taken from the first part of Mercury News’ interview with Bill Gates. A lot of this information has been reported before, but since this is his actual words, you do get a better idea of what Bill was trying to express, and how he carried himself.
On the Xbox 360 Strategy:
ItÂ’s working perfectly. We wanted to be the guy with the small box that costs less. We wanted to have the most compelling or better than anyone elseÂ’s box. We wanted to have the most games. We wanted to play to our software strength, and tools and online. We wanted to get most respects, except for the online capability, we wanted to swap positions with Sony. We wanted to not be a year late, not be a big box, not be a more expensive box. How are we doing on that?
On Nintendo and what they’re doing:
Sony has always been our most direct competitor. Nintendo of course is a competitor. But look at the resolution you get with a controlled experience like that. Say to yourself, how in terms of using a game for a long period of time, what kind of accuracy and capability do you want? Look at the classic Nintendo positioning. Look at the graphics. Look at NintendoÂ’s execution in terms of online capability. We have this thing that nobody has ever seen before. When you say to your friend, hey letÂ’s play online, you say then you have to buy an Xbox. ThatÂ’s what 10 million people say. If you want to play online, get an Xbox. WeÂ’re not standing still. Look at what you saw today connecting up the world to the Windows PC. Do you expect Nintendo to rev up a team to create cross-device gaming and tool kits to develop those things? Not very likely. We clearly think that Nintendo did some things right.
On Sony, the Cell, and the Graphics:
They were going to have the Cell be the video processor. But they didnÂ’t know what they were doing. They said the Cell is the video processor. But they turned to Nvidia at the last minute, but Nvidia canÂ’t do embedded DRAM. Go look at the bandwidth problems. Go ask the guys running Â… now. They took their year and burned it by not having a decent CPU strategy and then turning to Nvidia at the last minute. ItÂ’s a very unusual thing. Those processors are isolated from each other.
…ItÂ’s just like pointing at the Xbox 1. We were 20 percent better. But it didnÂ’t matter. We were a year late, didnÂ’t have the best games. We had this bigger box. We did have online. We didn’t switch positions on that.
The sentence that Bill said that made the most sense to us? “If you want to play online, get an Xbox.” At the moment, and we stress, at the moment, given the XBLA traffic and the library of available multiplayer experiences, Bill’s statement can’t be more self-evident.
For the complete transcript of the interview, click the link below.