GDC: (Bloggers) breakfast of champions

Microsoft sponsored a "Blogger's Breakfast" Wednesday morning, arranging for several select bloggers from the interweb to meet with some of the Xbox bloggers Larry Hyrb (aka Major Nelson), and John Porcaro and Cesar Menendez (Gamerscore Blog) and some Xbox executives, Peter Moore and Chris Satchell.

I know, I promised to report on their eating habits, but alas most of the eating occurred while standing and mingling pre-chat. That being said, I didn't see food on anyone's shirt and everyone was exceedingly polite and pleasant, so I can only extrapolate their eating habits were of the highest order.

Before I get into what we talked about, I'd like to thank everyone at Microsoft for arranging this informal get together and giving us a chance to hear from them first hand. Now, onto the meat and potatoes of this blogger's breakfast.

(Left to right: Peter Moore, Cesar Menendez, me)

The bloggers came out swinging, asking about the PS3 delay. Peter Moore acknowledged this was a "window of opportunity" but that it wouldn't fundamentally alter their plans; they're still going to try to sell consoles and make games. Alright, we knew he would say that. Let's try this again: when is the portable Xbox shipping?!

Nervous glances, whispers; "How did they know about the secret announcement?!"

That's what we were hoping they'd say but, of course, they parried this jab as well. Moore called Takahashi's piece "speculative" and that he added "2 plus 2 to get 7, 8, or 9." He also said the BusinessWeek piece was speculative, so Takahashi's is therefore speculation built on top of speculation.

(Left to right: John Porcaro, Peter Moore, Cesar Menendez)

Moore did say they were interested in the space though if the approach is innovative and pointed to the Nintendo DS as an example with genre-bending games like Nintendogs and Brain Age. He also took the opportunity to jab the PSP, calling it a media player that also happens to play games (oh snap!).

Regarding the Revolution, he estimated that Nintendo might have 10-12% global market share in the next generation with their biggest weakness being lack of strong third-party support. Of course the Gamecube has pretty weak third-party support relative to both Microsoft and Sony and continues to do far greater than 10-12%. Our highly scientific poll shows much different results as well.

(Left to right: Gaming Steve, John Porcaro, Peter Moore)

Adam Levine from Gamer Andy asks about the Vista delay and Moore and Satchell agree that it isn't a problem, arguing that the "delay" is arguably semantic since there was no release date. Satchell went on to explain how Direct3D 10 is a "fundamentally new graphics system."

With corporate reorganization placing Vista gaming under the gaming space (as opposed to the Windows space) Moore explains how the Vista launch is being handled much more like a console launch. Levine asked about "user generated content" and they responded that "some companies" are working on it. Levine cited Oblivion IV's creators at Bethesda as laying the blame at Microsoft's feet for the lack of tools to enable this.

(Left to right: Adam Levine from Gamer Andy, Gaming Steve)

We got into Viva Piñata, setting Peter Moore up for the line of the morning: the pinatas will be able to do the "romance dance." That's HAWT! Moore explained the need for a game like VP, "We need to expand the install base, and we need to do it quickly," or else they risk maintaining the status quo of the FPS-heavy Xbox™. They consider the IP to be very risky; it could be a huge hit, or a huge failure, but that "it's incumbent on them to take risks" to prove to other developers what kind of games can be successful on the platform.

(Left to Right: Joel Johnson from Gizmodo, Brian Crecente from Kotaku)

On the (super-hot) topic of downloadable content, Moore was equivocal. He explained how downloadable content could disrupt the retail partnerships they've worked to establish (yeah!) and that if they decide to do it, they would need to tread carefully. He said, just hours before Phil Harrison's PlayStation 3 keynote, "If anyone does it, it'll probably be us." Now it's a question of who does it first.

Downloadable content in the form of episodic content or MMORPG's are the potential killer-app. We discussed the massive popularity of WoW in China, a country whose rampant piracy makes console manufacturers nervous, despite its immense financial growth. Moore cited both 24 and Lost as examples of episodic content that was worth emulating; creating frequently updated content that demands viewer loyalty, and creates buzz around it.

(Larry Hyrb, aka Major Nelson)

Moore was bullish on their success in Japan, pointing to their exclusive collaborations with industry heavy-hitters like Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi ("a real sleeves up, hands in the dirt" game designer), now working on several Xbox 360 titles, Ninety-Nine Nights' Tetsuya Mizuguchi, and Dead or Alive 4's Tomonobu Itagaki.

Though he isn't in charge of running the day to day Japanese operations, Moore (who previously worked with Sega and has a long history working in Japan) said, "I run Japan as one of my hobbies." Interesting, uh... hobby there. I do needlepoint, which is sort of like running an enormous multi-national.

There was a ton more I would have loved to ask, but the breakfast was only an hour, and everyone at the table was full of good questions. If you're still interested, you can hear my thoughts on the breakfast on the Gaming Steve podcast that I co-hosted. On behalf of Joystiq, I'd like to once again thank Microsoft for throwing your VIPs in a room with a bunch of hungry bloggers without a script.

(Most of these pictures have been lifted shamelessly from Major Nelson's and John Porcaro's Flickr feeds. Thanks, guys! Call me if you're in Philly, we'll do lunch next time. )