Fable creator wants Microsoft to tone down the “all-in-one media hub” shtick
Former Microsoft Games Studio director and current mobile developer, Peter Molyneux, is anxious to learn more about Microsoft’s next Xbox, set to be unveiled on May 21. However, he fears that Microsoft might be playing up the “media hub” capabilities too much and is losing sight of what truly matters in a home console: the games.
“What I would do is double-down on what this console is for: it’s for playing games,” the perennial promise man told EDGE in a recent interview. “It’s for playing console games for this massive, incredibly loyal audience of gamers out there. When they start to mix all this other stuff in there I’m kind of slightly like: ‘look, I don’t want another way of looking at Facebook.’ You know, I’ve got all the ways of looking at Facebook. I don’t want another way of looking at Netflix. Just give me what I’ve paid my £299 for, and that is to play amazing, incredible computer games.”
Ignoring Molyneux’s own history of aiming for the stars but coming up woefully short, the man has a point. When Microsoft spends a hefty chunk of its E3 conferences talking up SmartGlass or even Internet Explorer like it’s some big thing, or releases a barely functioning Kinect app to order pizza because using a phone or web browser is so exhausting, you have to wonder if the company has completely missed the point. These are supplementary features that don’t deserve all the time and attention awarded them. Can the machine play games? Talk about that, please.
Peter Molyneux on the next Xbox: “I don’t want another way of looking at Facebook” [EDGE]
