albert-penello
Latest
Streaming Xbox 360 games on Xbox One 'problematic' right now
Back in September, at a Microsoft company meeting, cloud-based games streaming was demonstrated using a copy of Halo 4, which was seen running on a PC and a Windows Phone with attached Xbox 360 controller. Albert Penello, lead planner on Xbox One, Xbox 360 and Kinect, said the technology is simultaneously "really cool and really problematic" to pull off. "It's really cool and really problematic, all at the same time, insofar as it's really super cool if you happen to have the world's most awesome internet connection," Penello told Polygon. "It works way better than you'd expect it to. So managing quality of service, the tolerance people will have for it being crappy. Can you imagine, in this day and age, with the bad information around, and we can't control the quality of that experience and make sure it's good, or have to tell people they can't do it?" Penello went on to say this specific demonstration was "a grand experiment" but it's all a matter of improving the Xbox Live network before going forward with any kind of feature launch. Penello also didn't rule out the possibility of streaming Xbox One games. "I know we did a lot of work behind it, and we said this is one of the things where the network just has to get better before we can do it. When that happens, you're going to have a really interesting conversation around that, can I actually run Xbox One games that way as well." While backwards compatibility is clearly on Microsoft's mind now, that wasn't always the case. When the Xbox One was announced back in May, it was originally going to do away with backwards compatibility entirely. Don Mattrick, who was Xbox head honcho at the time, then famously said, "If you're backwards compatible, you're really backwards." Mattrick wasn't at Microsoft much longer after that, taking over as CEO of Zynga just a few weeks later.
Penello: 'People just weren't ready' for all-digital Xbox One
Microsoft Senior Director of Product Management Albert Penello called the reveal of the Xbox One "the dark days," when the company didn't present a clear message to customers and it saw a wave of backlash to an all-digital, DRM-tuned console. "I do feel like we never got a chance to have a rational conversation about what we were trying to do," Penello told Engadget. When Microsoft revealed the Xbox One, it didn't have consistent answers to basic questions: Was it always on? Would it allow used games? Eventually, Microsoft announced Xbox One would require an internet connection once every day, and that didn't go over so well. Microsoft reversed its DRM features a few weeks later. "Sometimes the customer just says, 'No. I look at it this way, I'm done, I've made up my mind,'" Penello said. "And we go, well, we've gotta fix it. It's not worth it. And that's where I think we were on the digital stuff. We'll get back to some of the cool stuff, and we have a lot of the cool stuff still in there." Penello said Microsoft hasn't given up on a fully digital future. "We just think that's the way the future's gonna go," he said. "We may have been right. What we were wrong about was that it's just too soon. People just weren't ready to make that leap right away."
Microsoft: Cloud turns any Xbox One in the world into your Xbox
Most of the information in this promotional Xbox One video is common knowledge, but a few interesting tidbits can still be gleaned. Albert Penello, lead planner for Xbox, reveals that using your profile on another Xbox One not only gives you access to your purchases, but also your own customized home screen and your game saves. "Basically, any Xbox One, anywhere in the world, is your Xbox," Penello says. In terms of SmartGlass, Penello says the big appeal for Microsoft is discovery – being able to find content on the go, highlight it on a SmartGlass device, then come home and find it right there on Xbox One. "You can browse the entire catalog of games and entertainment on Xbox One on SmartGlass," Penello adds, and "you can navigate the dash; you can navigate your Blu-ray movies." Ryse: Son of Rome and Dead Rising 3 are also specifically called out for their SmartGlass functionality. Ryse lets players customize their characters, set up multiplayer matches and comb through a bunch of other content while away from the console, while Dead Rising 3's integration is more literal – your real-life phone is treated as a phone, and Dead Rising 3 will dispatch mission calls with their own storylines and characters through SmartGlass.
What ever happened to 360 faceplates?
As stock in new Joystiq offshoot PlateTweetz (360 faceplates that can update your Twitter feed, of course) has continued to decline, we look to someone, anyone for answers. Turns out OXM has our backs, asking Microsoft global marketing director Albert Penello about that very topic. "The idea wasn't bad ... people used to put faceplates on their cell phones. Rewind five years, faceplates were what everybody wanted to do," he said. "Turned out nobody bought it. So [we stopped] making them. We killed that one pretty quickly." Well, thanks for telling us now, Albert. We suppose you'll be explaining this to our stockholders?
Microsoft admits 'failure' with Xbox 360 faceplates, says nobody bought them
This one's strictly for the record, the one that documents failed aesthetic experiments. Microsoft's Albert Penello has been cornered for an interview by the British Official Xbox Magazine -- mostly to discuss the console's five-year anniversary -- and their discourse touched on the ill-fated frontal accessory for the original 360. Penello admitted that although "faceplates were what everybody wanted to do" five years ago, they pretty much fell flat in terms of retail success, which led Microsoft to kill them off pretty quickly. We can't say we ever developed strong feelings either way about these plastic prettifiers, let's just be happy that Microsoft's latest console peripheral probably won't be subject to similar mea culpa admissions five years from now.
Microsoft waiting for more 3D adoption before joining the race
Sony is pushing 3D gaming as a companion piece for its high-end televisions. Nintendo is bundling a 3D gaming system with its own, tiny high-end television. Microsoft, the first out of the gate in the current generation with the Xbox 360, is hanging back from the 3D race. Even though the Xbox 360 is capable of displaying 3D visuals (as it did for the Avatar game), Xbox head of global marketing Albert Penello told CVG that the company is happy to be behind the curve in terms of making a major push. "We're going to take more of an attitude of seeing what the adoption looks like," Penello said. "Right now, there's nothing technically that we can't do on the 3D side - we already have games out there today." He reminded CVG that Microsoft is not totally opting out of 3D gaming: " But for us right now, we're more on the 3D input take, you know, revolutionising things with Kinect." In other words, in Nintendo-land, you look at games in 3D. But in Xbox-land, games look at you!
Microsoft discusses Wii-esque Project Natal branding strategy
digg_url = 'http://www.joystiq.com/2009/10/15/microsoft-discusses-wii-esque-project-natal-branding-strategy/'; While we may be nervous about Microsoft's Project Natal branding strategy -- remember, that's just a codename -- the suits in Redmond share no such concern. That's because the Natal project is following Nintendo's lead in more ways than just easy-to-play, motion-based technology. It's also following Nintendo's branding strategy. On May 11, 2004 Nintendo president Satoru Iwata announced the "Nintendo Revolution" to the E3 audience and, while he didn't show off the motion-based controller (we wouldn't see that for another sixteen months, at TGS 2005), he did promise "an unprecedented gameplay experience." The Revolution would offer "something no other machine has delivered before." The following May, over two years after first announcing the "Revolution," Nintendo revealed the product's final name just before E3: Wii. When we asked Microsoft's Robbie Bach, "When can we stop calling it Natal?" at a recent Open House event, the exec wasn't shy about comparing the company's strategy to Nintendo's. "When Nintendo came out with the name 'Wii,' people sort of said 'Oh gosh, that's kind of a goofy, weird name.' I haven't heard a comment about it being a goofy name since the week after they announced the name," Bach said. "And suddenly, people just called it the 'Wii' and moved on." And, specifically, they've moved on to buying them en masse.
No plans for 250GB Xbox drive outside Modern Warfare 2 bundle, MS says
Shortly after the announcement of the Limited Edition Modern Warfare 2 Xbox 360 bundle, we had a chance to grill Microsoft's Albert Penello, director of platform marketing for Xbox, about the bundle. While Pinello confirmed the bundle's absence of any additional accessories – no high-definition cables, no WiFi adapter – he also commented on the 250GB hard drive. When asked if Microsoft had any plans to sell the significantly embiggened hard drive separately, Pinello said, "I wouldn't say plans. Maybe. I hear this story every two years. It was the 20s, and then the 60s, and then the 120s." Not that you could afford it anyway. So, Microsoft doesn't have "plans" per se, but Pinello pointed out that, historically, these things become available separately. Until then, if you want a massive 250GB of Xbox storage, your only avenue is purchasing the $399 Modern Warfare 2 bundle. %Gallery-73023%
Microsoft aware Xbox 360 "sweet spot" is $199, not limited to 20-something demographic
Xbox's director of product management, David Hufford, said to Bloomberg yesterday that "We are well aware that the sweet spot of the market is really 199 bucks.'' Peter Moore and Albert Penello, the big guys of Xbox marketing, also stated that the company needs to "expand our demographic" and build content that appeals to people other than the 20-something males (in other words: "hello Moms!"). Why exactly Microsoft has decided to take the metaphorical mouth freshener at this point isn't quite clear, although we're guessing it comes down to an attempt to differentiate the Xbox from the PS3 in the minds of household purchasing decision makers and take a little sheen of the Wii's apparent domination of the lucrative casual gaming market. Hey, if these veiled marketing quotes eventually means cheaper consoles, who can complain? Microsoft, just cut the prices all-freakin'-ready.[Via Joystiq]
