Dr_Cogent said:
Why hate Peter Moore anyhow?
He's just a PR guy. He's paid to try to make MS look good and promote the Xbox 360.
That's his job. If you had his job, you'd be saying the same shit most likely - well, if you wanted to keep it that is.
Quit hating on Peter Moore. If you want to hate on something, hate on the Phantom and their creators because all they are doing is bilking investors out of millions of dollars.
That is part of his job...as VP of Sales and Marketing he's also in charge of the market research division of the company and how what they find relates to the business decisions that MS finally decides to execute. Recent independent market research has pointed to trends that the industry has fallen into the trap of sequel-itis...a Hollywood-esque problem that is hard for game developers to break out of. They know that the branding associated with certain game franchises that are well established makes for a good ROI more times than not, especially because they've pumped so many marketing dollars into the franchises in the first place. For them, a sequel is a safe bet, a conservative business decision. But it seems that when the market is saturated with sequels, diminishing returns becomes a real problem for many of these franchises. There are only so many Need For Speeds a person is going to want to buy. But it is still many times more risky to make an original franchise because, aside from the game possibly being bad or people not understanding its concept, the marketing dollars which should be spent to market the game aren't there because, not so ironically, they are being spent on the developer's flagship franchises. Also, the time and development costs associated with creating new engines/technology are risky, as well. I would say this is why developers lean on franchises to keep them afloat in the first place and perpetuate this cycle of sequel-itis.
On the positive side of originality (and why developers should break this cycle), the long-term payoff for gamers, hardware makers, and developers alike is greater with higher consumer satisfaction leading to a higher platform-specific software attach rate and a consumer association with original, qualtiy content and better brand image for the game developer. This all then leads to greater sales of the paticular console platform the titles appear on.
Weighing all of these things I would think would fall under his job description. I'm sure he is aware of all the things I mentioned above but the fact he says them, but won't act on them to the degree most of us would like to see can be attributed to the conservative business decisions that megacorporations will likely continue to stick to because they are more concerned with turning short-term profits for their shareholders than long-term growth of the industry and customer satisfaction.
Also, this is a little off-topic but:
I know Nintendo has its fair share of franchises, but their willingness to innovate and come out with new content may have to do with the fact that they are indeed a smaller company than both Sony and MS and their goals are different. It's nice to see competitions within the mainstream console sector (MS vs Sony), but I think it would be pretty awesome if there were some competitors for Nintendo. Nintendo does very well for themselves. Their business may be smaller than the other 2, but it indeed is very profitable, and I don't see why no one has wanted a piece of that pie.