Another gem from the Guardian interview with Peter Moore, the second part of which you can read here. Apparently Microsoft didn’t much care about Nintendo in 2003: it was all about bringing Sony down.

“[Steve Ballmer] wanted my attitude, he didn’t care what I’d achieved at Sega, he wanted to know how I was going to win for Microsoft, how we were going to take on Sony, how would we compete with – or acquire – Nintendo.

“Those were the conversations in those days. It was a classic build or buy conversation. Xbox had launched but it was an aggressive black box for shooters, and how do we evolve that, how do we build the next Xbox, how do we get after Sony? Interestingly, we were just completely fixated on Sony – Nintendo didn’t even come into the conversation.”

That interview’s just brilliant. Read it.

This guy is holding nothing back.

link here.

http://www.videogaming247.com/2008/09/16/moore-microsoft-was-completely-fixated-on-sony/

Well Neither Sony nor Microsoft saw Nintendo as a threat this gen. Before they were not competing with Wii because they didn't see Wii as a threat. Now they are not competing with Wii because they realise they have no chance.

nobody expected nintendo to make such a comeback

That attitude fits MS, but you do what you can to win. Sony was the top dog, the competitors should have been fixated on them. Otherwise, what's your point in entering the console war at all? They've done a decent job too, while with many problems, they still beat Sony to the punch this gen. And billions in loss over faulty consoles or not, they still didn't lose as much as Sony and still have a lead on Sony. And they can sell at a lower price than Sony, so it looks like their strategy thus far has worked. Their problem? When theres only 3 products in one market, NEVER completely discount one in favor of the other. Nintendo may have been the bottom feeder, but Nintendo is a gaming juggernaut. They slept on them and look what happened.

of course. Sony was market leader.

That's what led them to launching so early.

They wanted to follow Sony's exact footsteps to insure victory... We see how well that worked out.y

I think MS objective is just to kill off sony thats all...

sony should come out with its own operating system called 'Curtains'

Haha starting to like Peter Moore again haha. Like his in your face attitude haha.

duh they were fixated on Sony, is there anyone who has watched Microsofts actions for the last 5 years that hasn't figured that out yet?

They see Sony as a threat, more then any other company outside maybe Apple and Google, to the so called Microsoft "ecosystem".

Sony is an innovative company (as are Apple and Google) that pushes new technologies and the boarder of whats possible. This leads to ideas that push what is possible and those ideas tend to push out the old guard of which Microsoft is king. If the Playstation, for example, recieves more and more media options, eventually there is just no market for a "media PC" and less of a need for a PC with an expensive OS in the first place.

If Sony is able to improve the console market more and more with each generation a huge driver of PC growth will be removed (gaming accounts for a small fraction of total PC purchases, but a high amount of high end PC purchases which is where most of the money is. It's primarily gamers who buy overpriced products like Vista Ultimate).

They knew/know that Sony will push and push that envelope, its just the kind of company its been for decades now. Like Apple and Google it is always looking to that next thing almost to a fault. Nintendo just is not that company. The likelihood of a do everything Nintendo box is very slim. They even have yet to include out of the box DVD functionality in the Wii much less try to turn it into some media powerhouse. Nintendo is in it for highest immediate profit, they don't really seem interested in becoming some kind of Sony type electronics innovator.

Either way if Microsoft succeeds the quality of consoles and the gaming market in general will take a dive just like every market Microsoft takes over. They obviously want to stop taking losses, and they know the only way they will do that is by getting rid of Sony so they can finally jack up the price and extort more money out of developers like they have with their Windows monopoly.

Sony, like Apple, is a better company that makes better products with less staff and less money. Since Microsoft can't ever compete on quality (not once in their existence have they won a battle for a market on quality with anyone) they can sure use that advantage in money.

"Microsoft to play, we truly believe in Xbox as being something that can… there was a little bit of a concern with Sony – we wanted to keep them out of the living room, from a software and services perspective. And then I started work at Microsoft on February 1 2003."

Haha just saw that while reading the rest of the interview, EXACTLY what I thought. Whoever says Microsoft is some kind of agent of consumer choice is kidding themselves. They're in it to REMOVE choice not to add to it.