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Bill Gates made a surprise appearance at the Microsoft press conference in Hollywood to promote the Xbox 360. After his appearance, MTV had a chance to catch up with the rich and famous CEO of Microsoft.
Surprisingly, Gates admits to keeping up with the progress of Microsoft’s prize system. “Not a week goes by that there’s not five to ten e-mails where we’re talking about what we’re seeing, what we’re doing,” he stated.
Although the majority of the work is left to the Xbox executives, Gates is excited about the concepts Microsoft is offering and skeptical about his competition.
His primary concern about Sony and Nintendo’s concepts was the motion-sensitive controller. “There’s room for innovation here, but moving that controller around – it’s something that’s not mainstream for most games. It’s tough because sometimes you move the controller, and you don’t [mean] to fly into the ground. You just want to put the controller down,” he commented. “People aren’t that good at standing totally still. Even pilots actually sit in a chair when they do their flying. So there’s a lot to be learned about these controllers.”
“Gaming is changing,” Gates stated. “We’ll never leave behind the old genres. There will always be first-person shooters and football and those things, but we’ve got to complement that with lots of new ideas so that everybody feels like it’s new and engaging for them.”
He felt that Xbox Live allowed for such innovation and moved gaming forward. Most people, he felt, want gaming to be social. “Some games you are going to be playing by yourself,” he explained. “But most of gaming, particularly as we draw in both men and women and people of all ages, most of it is going to be social.”
Gates also hinted that Microsoft may move into the portable market. “Over time you have to say, will you carry in your pocket a media device and a phone and a gaming device and, say, a tablet device for reading?” Probably not. He thinks people will want to combine them. “People have different blends of that now. The world isn’t ready yet for a device that meets all of those needs. But go a few years out, the hardware gets a lot better, we’ll be there with the software platform, and I think everybody will just take it for granted that there will be a better device.”
Unfortunately, Gates didn’t comment on what we all want to know… all he would say was “Halo 3. 2007. It’ll be great.”