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X03 transcript: Part 2 |
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 X03 transcript: Part 2
Thursday, September 18th, 2003
Ah, merci, Michel. Er... je m'appel... OK, I promise, no more bad French.
It's great to be back at my favourite party of the year. And this year my job is easier than ever. All I have to do is tell you about the strongest line-up of games this industry has ever seen - all coming for Xbox, and maybe for Xbox Live. Michel mentioned a few titles coming this Christmas, and I know you've heard about some of the others.
Many of the hottest games on the way were developed right here in Europe, like Project Gotham Racing 2, a new urban version of the motor sports game with incredibly gorgeous cars and a scoring system that rewards you for your driving skills, not just for winning. And PGR2 is enabled for play on Xbox Live, so racing fans will now be able to compete with friends across town or around the world.
[whooping]
Codemasters' TOCA Race Driver has also become a popular Xbox franchise, especially here in Europe. Next year we'll see a new Xbox-exclusive, live-enabled sequel, Race Driver 2: The Ultimate Driving Simulator. It's going to allow up to twelve drivers to go head-to-head-to-head. Multiplayer online racing is something you have to experience to believe.
And as you heard from Yves, the third instalment of Ubi Soft's hot Rainbow Six series will be here for Christmas. Also for Christmas, we're introducing Grabbed by the Ghoulies, the first title from Rare.
[yeahs and woos]
It's been great. They joined Microsoft Game Studios last fall, and as always, the guys at Rare have invented a unique gaming world, intuitive and easy to get into and really, really funny. It's a game that appeals to everyone who's played it, especially families and younger players.
And that's just the start of more than fifty new titles that are coming between now and the end of the year. But we're going to continue to pull away from the competition after Christmas too. Starting with Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow, the sequel to last year's blockbuster which sold more than a million and a half copies both here and in the States. Also coming next year from Microsoft Game Studios: Sudeki. It brings the action to the RPG genre in a uniquely rendered Japanese anime style.
Following that, 2004 will see the coming of Kameo, another exclusive creation from the inspired minds at Rare. Kameo has the universal appeal of a fairytale, and it's sure to win an audience as big as the imagination that went into it. Here's a look at the world premiere of some of the new features coming in Kameo.
[Kameo gameplay video]
Now I want to show you more of another exclusive coming to Xbox, Namco's Breakdown. It will be playable for the first time ever here at X03. Here's a video sneak peek of just how great it looks on Xbox.
[Breakdown video]
As Michel mentioned, XSN Sports is also coming to Xbox Live in Europe in 2004. And right on time, Rallisport Challenge 2 is also coming to Xbox Live.
[a lone whoop]
It's good, yeah. The first racing title in the XSN Sports brand, RC2 is going to spark some heat in the competition. RC2 is all about attitude, and this video is going to give you an idea of just what I'm talking about. Take a look.
[Rallisport Challenge 2 video]
That's pretty cool, huh? But that's not all. I've got another announcement that Xbox gamers should be pretty jazzed about. We have a great new development partner: Epic Games. And they've signed to help develop several new games exclusively for Xbox. Now, I know everyone here knows Epic. They were founded twelve years ago by Tim Sweeney and Mark Rein. Epic created the [???] Unreal and Unreal Tournament series of games, not to mention the great Unreal engine that now powers more than ten million games worldwide. To tell you more about the Microsoft/Epic partnership, please welcome Jay Wilbur.
Jay Wilbur:
Thanks, Ed. One year ago, I stood on the Stage in Seville at X02 showing Unreal Championship, our Xbox Live launch product, I asked a question asked by one of the in-game warriors. I asked, do you want some? Well I'm happy to report that vast numbers of Xbox Live gamers from all over the world purchased that game, and enjoyed it, and answered that question with a resounding yes.
And it seemed that one other group wanted some: Microsoft. It's my honour and pleasure to announce that Epic Games and Microsoft have recently entered a multi-title publishing agreement. Epic Games' long history of game and game-technology development combined with Microsoft's cutting-edge Xbox console hardware and first-party publishing resources is going to make this a marriage made in heaven, for the ultimate benefit of gamers the world over.
But that's enough out of me. I'd like to introduce two guys I'm sure you all know. And they can pump a bit more about Epic and this partnership. Unfortunately they couldn't make it - they're at home working diligently on our upcoming products. You see, Epic is a very small, tight, focussed development group. And if only one of us could come to the south of France to, um, "work", thank god it's me! Anyway, here on taped interview are Epic President and Lead Programmer Tim Sweeney, and our lead designer, Cliffy B.
Tim Sweeney on video:
Epic's games have always been about just pure fun, and whether it's a 2D [???], or a pinball game, or a 3D immersive environment, it's all just boiling it down to the essence of what's really fun to do in this environment. It's really the whole experience. Does the environment here look realistic? Does everything look interesting? Are you seeing things that you've never seen before?
Cliff Bleszinski on video
I'd like to think that what Epic brings to the table first and foremost is twelve years of solid experience of great games with the motivation of [???]. We're operating under the assumption that if you make a great game, it will sell.
Tim Sweeney:
[????] It's a team of twenty content developers who are among the best artists and programmers in the world.
Cliff Bleszinski:
It's a stable of talented, hard-working, bad-ass talents that you can't find anywhere else.
Tim Sweeney:
We've always seen the gamers as our customers. Some developers look at their publisher as their customer, and some developers look at retailers and their customers. We look at just the gamers.
Cliff Bleszinski:
The people at Microsoft really seem to not only know their stuff, but appear to be genuinely interested in what we do, and the kind of game we can give them.
Tim Sweeney:
Our relation with our publisher is a partnership, and if we're not working for Microsoft, Microsoft's not working for us. We collaborate together to achieve the maximum success. I believe that.
Cliff Bleszinski:
I believe that gamers out there who haven't bought an Xbox yet are going to be seeing the reason why they have to get an Xbox. [???] The time I have to say is pretty near.
Tim Sweeney:
We look at the big strength of our relationship with Microsoft is having the resources to deal with the development of great Xbox games. [????] And what Microsoft gets out of it is some awesome games.
Jay Wilbur:
I'm going to wrap this up by saying Epic Games together with Scion Studios are pleased to announce the development of new games for the Xbox to be published by Microsoft Game Studios. Now, we're not in a position to discuss details of these games at this venue. Details will emerge soon enough. I stand before you today and tell you you're definitely going to want some of this.
Ed Fries:
Thanks, Jay. Thanks a lot. Thanks a lot for suffering and coming all the way out here to France.
Looking at the games being created for Xbox, as I do just about every day, I get to think a lot about what makes a great game. As Michel said a few minutes ago, great games are good to play. But what does that mean? What makes a game good to play?
We think that the Xbox platform has a lot to do with it. The proof is that so many great games are only on the Xbox. And so many games are better on Xbox than any other console. But to me, the real proof that the Xbox is the superior game platform is the superior game makers who have made Xbox their game platform of choice. What really makes great games is the creativity, the artistry, the ideas that go into them. And those qualities come from the artists who design them. So I've invited some of those artists to join us at X03 to talk a little bit about how they think and create, why they like creating for Xbox and what they're working on now.
Our first guest is one of the most admired, most original minds in the industry - a creator not just of games, but of entire worlds that engross games players for years. Please welcome Peter Molyneux.
Peter Molyneux (with Simon Carter playing):
Thank you very much, Ed. It's fantastic to be here. [????] My god, it's incredible. We're going to be showing, live, Simon here is going to be playing Fable, the latest version of Fable. Which is a crazy thing to do. We should have made a video, but we thought it would be more impactful to see the game being played live, so please forgive us because we're both pretty nervous.
Let me tell you a bit about Fable. What it is, is a game which, really, was started almost fifteen years ago in my mind when I first played a role-playing game called Wizardry. And I lost my first girlfriend to Wizardry, when she was waiting in the pub for me while I was completing level two. And I haven't lost that passion for role-playing games since.
But really, it wasn't just a simple role-playing game I wanted to create on the Xbox. We really wanted to create something different - a role-playing game which could reflect what sort of player you were. You can be any sort of character you like in the world, you can be any sort of person you like. It is a virtual world, a world which unfolds before you, and in which you can play a character that's good or evil. You can play the most despicable, evil character of all time, or the wonderfully nice and noble character.
Now, all of that is wonderful and great, but it's no good at all without amazing combat mechanics. So what we'll demonstrate here, what's Simon's showing is the ability to take on as many opponents as you like. We've got a combat system that really rewards you, a combat system you can pick up and play [????]. You can mix swordplay with ranged combat, with magical combat. We've got over 21 different magical effects you can specialise in, all of which can be blended together within the combat arena.
We've had five people working for over two years on just the combat alone, mixing that with the idea of this virtual world, a world which people can experiment and play around with... anything they like. And in the unplugged session tomorrow, we're doing a brave thing, and that is asking people what they want to do in the world. Do you want to kill people, as Simon's doing now? Do you want to go and save the maiden? Do you want to perhaps even go and ask her for her hand in marriage? Even chat up a girl, even you can get married and have children. All of those things are what I wanted to bring - a true virtual world which can unfold before you and which can be uniquely yours.
And that to me is the fascination of what the Xbox has allowed. It has allowed us to create games that have never existed before. And we've seen some amazing visuals this evening, and we'll go on to see some more amazing visuals. But it's the nucleus within these games that's so important.
So, for example, one of the things in Fable that you can do is you can decide when, how fast to press through the story. What Simon's doing now, he's about to go to the graveyard and take on one of the quests. So this quest is an interesting one because he has to keep finding pieces of that quest to take on. And I think that is the key thing, allowing players to dip into the experience and dip out of the experience. Allowing them, for example, to walk into a town, to buy a shop, buy a house, even buy the whole town, which is so important. These are the visuals that'll be shown tomorrow so please come along to the Unplugged session.
Well thank you very much for looking in. As you see it's coming along, it's a complete experience now. I'd like to hand back to Ed for some more exciting products.
Ed Fries:
Thank you, Peter. If you were at E3 last spring, you got a look at the most eagerly anticipated game coming to any platform in the next year. For this event I wanted to do something different. I wanted to brief, behind the scenes look at the artists working incredibly hard to create Halo 2.
[whooping]
Marty O'Donnell (on video):
Every piece of music tells its own little internal story, so what I want to be able to do is have my little music story somehow match up with Eve's story, or with the story that's being told by the visuals.
Joseph Staten (on video):
It's a different kind of story than I think you usually encounter in video games. Usually it's a story about a hero who gets stronger and stronger helping to defeat this much more powerful foe.
Jason Jones (on video):
The really hard thing about the story is there are so many different ways to tell a story. There are so many different good stories. Telling a story in a game is different to telling a story in a book because if you're part of the story of a game that's just lending flavour to the times when you're playing, so that when you're driving around in the Warthog with the marine hanging out the side door and the guy in the back with the chain gun, you believe that you're on this alien artefact called Halo circling a gas giant light years away from Earth and.. I think it's [?????], that's the best way to say it.
Joseph Staten (on video):
All our characters have flaws, they're not perfect heroes. And Halo's story is one about salvation, it's a story of warriors with not a lot of options, they have their backs up against the wall, and they're trying to set themselves free. We just like good stories. We certainly worry about that a lot more than you might think we have to in a game that's mostly just about action and about not thinking.
This process began at the end of Halo, and realising all the stuff that we had left out. Now, what did we really want to tell, but didn't have time to. And [???] a couple of those core ideas. Jason locked himself in a room for a while and organised his core ideas, and then came to me and said, hey, these are my thoughts about the storyline of Halo 2, what do you think? And he approached other people as well.
It's not about [???], it's not about playing movies or waiting two hours between every five minutes of gameplay but [??????]
There was these scene which will go down in the untold lore of Bungie which, Miranda (?) strapped a bomb to Master Chief's back and shoved him down a hole. And it was this horrible scene of betrayal. And, er, Jason was going through a rather difficult breakup at the time. I think that might have had something to do with it.
Jamie Greisemer (on video):
In Halo 1 there was the 30 seconds of fun that happened over and over and over and over again. If you can get 30 seconds of fun, you can pretty much stretch that out to being the entire game. [??] with bunch of guys, [???] attacking one of them before they were aware, [??] grenading a group of other guys, and then cleaning up the stragglers before they could even surround you. And so, you can have all the pretty graphics and all the different characters, lots of different weapons with different effects. But if you don't nail that 30 seconds, you're not going to have a great game.
Bungie guy:
The really important thing to do now is to take all those different disciplines we're all working on, and take all those pieces, take the AI code, and the physics, and the guys working on the [??] levels. And then you keep doing that, you keep colliding things together until, uh, until it's a game.
[rest drowned out by gunfire, music and whooping]
Ed Fries:
OK, that was fun to show.
Tecmo's Team Ninja has given us Dead or Alive, one of the most treasured franchises in video games history. And as most of you know, they're now bringing all of that legendary beauty, heroism and action to Xbox and Xbox Live with Dead or Alive Online. We're also very honoured to have the European playable premiere of Ninja Gaiden here at X03 - another realising of a classic franchise only on Xbox. I'm pleased to introduce Tecmo's guiding spirit, Tomonobu Itagaki.
Tomorrow he's going to demonstrate the latest playable Ninja Gaiden in his Developer Unplugged session. He'll also be making a special announcement in that session so you won't want to miss it. But tonight he's brought along a video tape to share some of his thoughts with all of us. Let's watch.
Tomonobu Itagaki (on video):
Ninja Gaiden will be released sometime near the beginning of next year, in continuation of the previous work on the Dead or Alive series. I want to make Ninja Gaiden a superb action game. It is very important for the Japanese game developers who are [???] creating excellent games for the Xbox. That's why I believe I'm [???], and I want Ninja Gaiden to be the next wonderful game that I make for Xbox. I want Ninja Gaiden to be the very best action game possible, and that's why we've been working on it for such a long time now. Of course, I'm proud of every part of Ninja Gaiden, but if I wanted to give specific examples, I would say that the camera work is superb, and the animation is fantastic. I just want to get the game out there, and show it to the world as soon as possible. The main thing of Ninja Gaiden is to make the number one action game in the world on the number one hardware console, which is Xbox. I just want people to be able to experience that.
Ed Fries:
Tomonobu Itagaki-san. Without taking away from their amazing originality, I think that what Fable and BC, Halo and Halo 2, Epic, and the Ninja franchises have in common is what makes a great game. As a player, you're the hero. You move through a deep, compelling world. You meet interesting characters, including adversaries, who like the memorable characters in great books, plays and movies have independent lives of their own. You're part of the big story, something that's bigger than you. You have to make choices. And how you choose affects your own fate. And often something bigger, as a result maybe you feel bigger, maybe you really do grow, maybe you really do change, maybe you learn something. In different forms, that's the kind of experience that you get from great role-playing games, great action games, sports games, racing games, great games of all kinds. It's the kind of experience you get from games on Xbox and the artists who create them. Thank you.
Now to wrap things up, please welcome back Eduardo Rosini.
Eduardo Rosini:
Thank you, Ed. As I said at the beginning, no wonder Xbox has such an incredible momentum in Europe. And it's getting more all the time.
Xbox gets its momentum from the game designers and publishers who are bring the greatest legends and the most amazing innovations to the Xbox platform. And there is more on the way, as Xbox gamers look forward to more than fifty new titles this Christmas, and the arrival next year of Halo 2, the next Splinter Cell, Breakdown, plus new titles from Rare, Epic and other great game developers.
Xbox gets its momentum from Xbox Live, the most successful broadband content service in history and the number one subscriber service in Europe. The only unified, trouble-free online gaming community that has millions of gamers every week worldwide. And there's more on the way as Xbox Live comes alive in six more European countries next month, and as more players come to Xbox Live to enjoy more games and more features online.
Finally, Xbox gets its momentum from the millions of devoted Xbox gamers. They know that the best games are on Xbox, and that every game looks better and plays better on Xbox. And, yes, there are more Xbox games on the way too, as we roll out more games, more Xbox Live features and a new worldwide branding campaign.
We're expanding the definition of interactive entertainment. And we're expanding the audience for interactive entertainment. We are connecting video games with the other digital devices, media and content that people use to connect with each other. From music and sports to the internet and wireless and more. We're reminding people that it's good to play together.
Which also happens to be an excellent theme for the rest of the evening. So thank you all for coming. And now, let's play together.
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