He stated that Microsoft knows that all consoles ”have to be great game machines first.” He went on to say that hardcore gamers have a wrongheaded belief that a console can’t do both entertainment and games.
”I don’t think competition for different forms of entertainment in the living room is anything new. People can watch TV in their living rooms now. People can listen to music in their living rooms now,” he noted, adding, ”There’s a false divide that gets created in people’s minds sometimes, as though hardcore gamers don’t also consume other forms of entertainment and wouldn’t appreciate those things being made more seamless and more integrated into a more elegant experience. I think that’s all that you’re seeing here. To me, as a gamer, I’m excited by it.”
Hirshberg also says Activision is finally intrigued by Kinect, after shying away from it. ”I made a passing comment that you’re going to see voice integration, voice commands via Kinect, which is something that we haven’t done in the past with Call of Duty. We think the improvements to Kinect really excite us because of the level of responsiveness and detail. I thought that the demo they did with the voice commands on television, the instant changing between games and music, was really compelling. You’ll see more of this coming from us as we get closer to the launch,” Hirshberg admitted.
He then added, “Obviously, we didn’t reveal that element today. We just mentioned it. But we’ve always made sure that we don’t just use new technology for novelty’s sake. We always make sure that it makes the gameplay better. In this case, we think it will.”
