Peter Moore – famous for his stints at both SEGA and Xbox – has admitted in a Gamertag Radio interview that he “encouraged” the rivalry between Sony and Microsoft because he felt the console war was “healthy for the industry”, but believes his former employer has lost its feistiness.
Moore is perhaps best remembered for revealing a Grand Theft Auto 4 tattoo during an iconic press conference, as he announced the Rockstar game would get timed exclusive DLC on the Xbox 360.
Prior to that, the sandbox series had been strongly associated with PlayStation, as the likes of GTA 3, Vice City, and San Andreas all released first on the PS2. It was the first in a string of blows to Sony’s brand, as stalwarts like Tekken and Final Fantasy all later announced they’d be going fully multiformat, too.
The industry is different today, of course, and decades later Xbox is now transitioning into a third-party publisher.
Moore believes the American console manufacturer would cut its hardware division if it could. “If [Microsoft] had the choice, would they make hardware?” he pondered. “No.”
He explained that he believes the trillion-dollar titan’s true goal is to stream games to whatever screen you own, as evidenced by its ‘This Is an Xbox’ marketing campaign.
But he pointed out that consoles are still popular, with the Nintendo Switch performing extraordinarily well in the latter stages of its lifespan, and PS5 on course to sell well over 100 million units as well.
“The acquisition of Activision Blizzard changed things, I think – not I think, I know – at Microsoft,” he continued. “This is not the old days of the console wars, and punching each other, and trying to steal customers and trying to get market share and build your attach rate. This is bigger than that in an economic sense.
“Has it lost a little bit of the feistiness that the industry I think fed upon and grew upon? I think so, yeah.”
How do you feel about the current state of the console war? Has it lost its edge following Xbox’s decision to bring its biggest games to PS5? Where does Nintendo fit into all this? Let us know in the comments section below.
