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[PhatSaqs]

http://www.armchairempire.com/Interviews/j-allard-xbox-360.htm

Some good stuff in here. Confirms Conker is the last Xbox 1st party game.

Omni: What went wrong in Japan and what are you doing to correct it for 360?

Allard: We didn’t have a team in place. We didn’t have a game plan that was rock solid. We didn’t take into account their needs in terms of the brand, the industrial design. The portfolio was very limited. We didn’t have the world’s best game developers and publisher support that we needed in Japan. And we weren’t differentiated. We also had a two-year disadvantage. [PS2] I think, launched in March of 2000, and we launched in February of 2002. That was another bad thing. They’re not getting a head start this time, that’s for sure. We’ve got the world’s best game publishers onboard. We’ve got the most creative, well-known developers onboard, which will bring more developers onboard. We’ve incorporated the regional feedback in terms of the name, in terms of the brand, in terms of the aesthetic qualities of the box. And the capabilities of the box, especially on gaming. And we’ve got a great team in place there now. It’s battle-scarred but very eager to get going.

Omni: Is there a cultural acceptance of an outside company coming in and trying to claim the market, versus the “home court advantage” of [Sony and Nintendo].

Allard: I would grant the advantage more to Sony in the sense that Mr. Kutaragi visits all the publishers very regularly. And [they] can have very active dialogue, which means the people responsible for creating the platform between the people that are creating the games. And Mr. Kutaragi may have wanted the executives making the decisions in Japan their hitch for the PlayStation business. The executive team from Redmond makes lots of journeys over to Japan to make sure that we’re visible and to take feedback on our licenses there. At the same time, what has Microsoft done for them? We don’t have the background with them. We haven’t helped advance their companies. Everyone, I would say, has been very flattering

to us in terms of us advancing the industry and they like the innovation and they like what we’re doing with Xbox 360 but what have we done for them? They are running businesses, so there is that advantage there that Sony holds that… the good news is, that this next generation the score is zero zero.

Omni: What do you think about Sony’s hardware?

Allard: I think they’ve mislead people being very specific about certain numbers in the press conference on Monday. We’re launching a product campaign, they’re launching a political campaign. They were clearly responsive to the system that we’ve designed. At the end of the day, our transistor count and their transistor count – about the same. Then you have to dig to the next level. We have a unified memory architecture. We didn’t tell developers how to split it, [Sony] split it. Every one of our developers might split it right down the middle but who knows. In terms of through-put and performance, they talk about 2X the floating point performance. That’s not right. They neglected to mention that we have about 3X integer performance. They further neglected to mention that 80% of games construction mix is integer and 20% is floating point so when you weight it out, we’ve actually tuned it a little bit better. In the end, it’s basically a wash. I look at it and say it’s a wash. You can make the case for us, you can make the case for them. We’ll publish a bunch of details so you guys can all speculate but it’s basically a wash. But I can say there’s will be harder to program for. And we’re going to have better software support. Both of these machines are so sophisticated that theoretical performance doesn’t matter – what matters is how much of that performance can be unlocked. The key to unlocking performance [of the hardware] is software.

Omni: I read somewhere that Xbox is going to be supported into 2007. Is that realistic?

Allard: We’re still making Xboxes today. We’ll sell more of them this year than Xbox 360s. We’ll be selling them deep into next year as well. From a software point of view you’re going to have software all the way up to ’07. But this is where the publishers have brought us on. You’re not going to see any from us. First party has to do the heavy lifting to prime the pump so the publishers can follow suit.

Omni: Will you make Xbox and Xbox 360 games for simultaneous release?

Allard: We’re not doing Xbox 1 games anymore. We’re done. Done. Conker is the last one, which is in manufacturing. All our attention is on Xbox 360. There are still going to be a lot of Xbox games [being made by publishers].

Omni: Will all Xbox games run on Xbox 360?

Allard: I will never say that we’re going to run all Xbox 1 games. What I will say is that we’re focused on a software solution. The way we’re tackling the problem is that we’re looking at the most successful, most popular games first then go down the list – so the most popular titles will (probably) run no problem. PS2 is not fully backwards compatible with PS1 – there was a problem where it wouldn’t run Gran Turismo.

 

[gofreak]

They neglected to mention that we have about 3X integer performance

Common misconception but the SPEs do integer too, Mr. Allard..

Anyway, interesting that they're still making Xboxes. Hasn't manufacturing finished, or reportedly finished?

 

[VictimOfGrief]

Good read.

 

[sonycowboy]

Omni: What do you think about Sony’s hardware?

Allard: I think they’ve mislead people being very specific about certain numbers in the press conference on Monday. We’re launching a product campaign, they’re launching a political campaign.

I'm sorry, but what a load of crap. That gets shot down by the "PR" analysis sent out by Microsoft, that I think we can all agree is completely one-sided and based on incomplete data regarding both the CELL & the RSX (and the way they interconnect).

 

[DopeyFish]

I'm sorry, but what a load of crap. That gets shot down by the "PR" analysis sent out by Microsoft, that I think we can all agree is completely one-sided and based on incomplete data regarding both the CELL & the RSX (and the way they interconnect).

they even STATED that in their comparison. It's based on complete knowledge of CELL and incomplete knowledge on RSX. (more than once at that)

 

[seismologist]

terrible.

 

[gofreak]

It's based on complete knowledge of CELL

Not complete enough, evidently (see: integer comparison)

 

[DopeyFish]

Not complete enough, evidently (see: integer comparison)

Last time I checked, J Allard wasn't part of the ATG.

 

[Legal Step]

I thought PS2 ran Gran Turismo fine. Allard is a wank.

 

[Phoenix]

Allard: I think they’ve mislead people being very specific about certain numbers in the press conference on Monday. We’re launching a product campaign, they’re launching a political campaign. They were clearly responsive to the system that we’ve designed. At the end of the day, our transistor count and their transistor count – about the same. Then you have to dig to the next level. We have a unified memory architecture. We didn’t tell developers how to split it, [Sony] split it. Every one of our developers might split it right down the middle but who knows. In terms of through-put and performance, they talk about 2X the floating point performance. That’s not right. They neglected to mention that we have about 3X integer performance. They further neglected to mention that 80% of games construction mix is integer and 20% is floating point so when you weight it out, we’ve actually tuned it a little bit better. In the end, it’s basically a wash. I look at it and say it’s a wash. You can make the case for us, you can make the case for them. We’ll publish a bunch of details so you guys can all speculate but it’s basically a wash.

What! Geometry and physics are inherently massive floating point ops. Any probability reasoning engine will be dealing in floats as well. To be honest I can't think of the last time that I've seen and engine heavily reliant on INTS except in the wireless space where the hardware doesn't have fast support for floats! What are they going to do, have people revert back to fixed point math!

But I can say there’s will be harder to program for. And we’re going to have better software support. Both of these machines are so sophisticated that theoretical performance doesn’t matter – what matters is how much of that performance can be unlocked. The key to unlocking performance [of the hardware] is software.

Based on what? Does Microsoft have a crystal ball somewhere?

Come on Allard, this damage control rhetoric is just sickening.

 

[GhaleonEB]

I'm sorry, but what a load of crap. That gets shot down by the "PR" analysis sent out by Microsoft, that I think we can all agree is completely one-sided and based on incomplete data regarding both the CELL & the RSX (and the way they interconnect).

Should have quoted the rest of the exchange.

They were clearly responsive to the system that we’ve designed. At the end of the day, our transistor count and their transistor count – about the same. Then you have to dig to the next level. We have a unified memory architecture. We didn’t tell developers how to split it, [Sony] split it. Every one of our developers might split it right down the middle but who knows. In terms of through-put and performance, they talk about 2X the floating point performance. That’s not right. They neglected to mention that we have about 3X integer performance. They further neglected to mention that 80% of games construction mix is integer and 20% is floating point so when you weight it out, we’ve actually tuned it a little bit better. In the end, it’s basically a wash. I look at it and say it’s a wash. You can make the case for us, you can make the case for them. We’ll publish a bunch of details so you guys can all speculate but it’s basically a wash. But I can say there’s will be harder to program for. And we’re going to have better software support. Both of these machines are so sophisticated that theoretical performance doesn’t matter – what matters is how much of that performance can be unlocked. The key to unlocking performance [of the hardware] is software.

Lots of high-level stuff, but at the end he's stiking to the line about software, not hardware. They've been saying that since XNA announcement, but is a big turnaround from this gen, that's for sure.

 

[Gek54]

I thought PS2 ran Gran Turismo fine. Allard is a wank.

Both GT1 and 2 worked flawlessly on my PS2. That is almost slander.

 

[3rdman]

Would it be too much to ask to make PR babble a banable offense...these things just get blown out of proportion by the masses here...

Guys, what do you expect him to say? I see a lot smiling and laughing goin' on when Sony claims the PS3 is 1% of a human and the 360 is simply Xbox 1.5...what is different here?

 

[gofreak]

Last time I checked, J Allard wasn't part of the ATG.

The same ATG that brought us the "3 times the 'general purpose' processing power" malarky? Seems he wouldn't be doing much better if he were part of that group.

He's either genuinely making a mistake based on false info being given to him from ATG, and should fire whomever is making him look foolish like this, or he's willfully partaking in a campaign to mislead.

 

[3rdman]

The same ATG that brought us the "3 times the 'general purpose' processing power" malarky? Seems he wouldn't be doing much better if he were part of that group.

He's either genuinely making a mistake based on false info being given to him from ATG, and should fire whomever is making him look foolish like this, or he's willfully partaking in a campaign to mislead.

I think you will find that a lot of the truths that we cling to are from a certain point of view.

 

[gofreak]

I think you will find that a lot of the truths that we cling to are from a certain point of view.

Well certain things are just true and certain things are just false. There's no getting around that.

 

[3rdman]

Well certain things are just true and certain things are just false. There's no getting around that.

I guess you didn't get the "Return of the Jedi" refernece, huh? I was just interjecting a joke hence the ""

 

[gofreak]

I guess you didn't get the "Empire Strikes Back" refernece, huh? I was just interjecting a joke hence the ""

Hehe, sorry...like I was saying in the Ep3 thread in OT, I wasn't very familiar with the original trilogy Now that you mention it, the line rings a bell Sorry

 

[wazoo]

I thought PS2 ran Gran Turismo fine. Allard is a wank.

Please reread and come back. He did not say that GT was not running on ps2.

 

[DarienA]

Please reread and come back. He did not say that GT was not running on ps2.

"PS2 is not fully backwards compatible with PS1 – there was a problem where it wouldn’t run Gran Turismo. "

What is the problem he's referencing? I don't remember it.

 

[wazoo]

"PS2 is not fully backwards compatible with PS1 – there was a problem where it wouldn’t run Gran Turismo. "

What is the problem he's referencing? I don't remember it.

No he says - at least I understand it like this - that it would have been a problem if ps2 was not able to run high profile games like GT.

What he tries to tell is that high profile games have to be working, then compatibility with lower profile games has to be investigated.

 

[Andy787]

No he says - at least I understand it like this - that it would have been a problem if ps2 was not able to run high profile games like GT.

What he tries to tell is that high profile games have to be working, then compatibility with lower profile games has to be investigated.

I do believe you would be well suited to re-read what you're telling others to re-read.

 

[DarienA]

No he says - at least I understand it like this - that it would have been a problem if ps2 was not able to run high profile games like GT.

What he tries to tell is that high profile games have to be working, then compatibility with lower profile games has to be investigated.

Please tell me how the HELL you got that?

It plainly says: "PS2 is not fully backwards compatible with PS1 – there was a problem where it wouldn’t run Gran Turismo"


Meaning: The ps2 isn't fully backwars compatible with the PS1. Somewhere along the line there was a problem where the PS2 would not run the original Gran Turismo.

When was this? I don't remember hearing about it.... I gotta go look around IGN to see if I can find that backwards compatilibility list they use to keep.

 

[wazoo]

Please tell me how the HELL you got that?

because it does not make sense at all.

1/ we all know GT1 was running on ps2

2/ its point is to prove that high profile games compatibility is what really matters

Either it is a misprint, or he is a liar.

 

[wazoo]

I do believe you would be well suited to re-read what you're telling others to re-read.

maybe I'm wrong.

 

[Musashi Wins!]

He needs to shut the hell up about PS backwards compatability. It seems akward everytime it comes up because as a gamer...I've never had a PS1 game that didn't work in my PS2. It wasn't most of them, or some of them...it's literally never been a problem though I'm sure there might be an exception or two out there. But I've never run into one. They keep mentioning that caveat, and it's lame.

 

[DarienA]

I've found some lists but they are very small... re: PS2 to PSOne backwards compatibility.. I expected them to be much larger... methinks.

 

[Legal Step]

Allard is one to talk about compatibility anyway. His new image is incompatible with Xbox2's sleek hip style. Microsoft please give J. Allard a 70's style afro makeover.

And according to the interview he is implying that PS2 doesn't play Gran Turismo.

 

[Gek54]

I thought everyone was expecting the PS3 to be easier to program for, has something changed?

 

[mrklaw]

He probably got an MS intern to scratch a GT disc and try and play it in his PS2 - hey it doesn't work, PS2 isn't fully compatible!


MS are playing as much, if not more, of a political campaign than they could ever accuse Sony of.

Why on earth would Sony embark on a radical CPU design project that is built around massive floating point calculations, if those were not exactly the kind of calculation needed for games.

sigh..

 

[SatelliteOfLove]

He needs to shut the hell up about PS backwards compatability. It seems akward everytime it comes up because as a gamer...I've never had a PS1 game that didn't work in my PS2. It wasn't most of them, or some of them...it's literally never been a problem though I'm sure there might be an exception or two out there. But I've never run into one. They keep mentioning that caveat, and it's lame.

A very small handful have problems; mostly european or japanese titles. FF Anthology and Chronicles are supposed to have problems saving, too; though I've never played them on my PS2, so I haven't verified that personally.

Revolution compatablilty: All GCN games without a hitch, (that we know).
PS3 compatability: All PS2 and PS1 games, with maybe the ones mentioned above having problems, (that we know).
XBox360: Select titles.

Yeah, he's spinnin' like 22 DUBs.

 

[Mr_Furious]

J Allard is a tool, and a clueless one at that.

 

[Mr Nash]

Geez people, don't get your panties in a knot about the backward compatibility stuff. His point wasn't to poke fun at GT 1, it was to draw attention to there being a handful of relatively high-profile PSX games that couldn't be played on the PS2, and they want to make sure this isn't the case with the 360:\

 

[Tabris]

PS2 is not fully backwards compatible with PS1 – there was a problem where it wouldn’t run Gran Turismo.

WTF? Gran Turismo runs fine. There's like 5 games out of 1500+ that don't work at all, and like 5 games that have bugs in them when run on PS2

That's like .7% of games. Some of which aren't even out here.

 

[DarienA]

Geez people, don't get your panties in a knot about the backward compatibility stuff. His point wasn't to poke fun at GT 1, it was to draw attention to there being a handful of relatively high-profile PSX games that couldn't be played on the PS2, and they want to make sure this isn't the case with the 360:\

...which high profiles titles were they?

 

[Tabris]

Geez people, don't get your panties in a knot about the backward compatibility stuff. His point wasn't to poke fun at GT 1, it was to draw attention to there being a handful of relatively high-profile PSX games that couldn't be played on the PS2, and they want to make sure this isn't the case with the 360:\

So they're worried about .7% of there collection not working? Give me a break.

He's spinning cause they're too cheap to pay nvidia.

 

[Reilly]

Geez people, don't get your panties in a knot about the backward compatibility stuff. His point wasn't to poke fun at GT 1, it was to draw attention to there being a handful of relatively high-profile PSX games that couldn't be played on the PS2, and they want to make sure this isn't the case with the 360:\

I'm pretty sure all PSone games run on PStwo. The only thing that doesn't work all the time is the texture smoothing and faster loads. That causes problems with games. Every game should run normally though.

 

[Gek54]

US:
Arcade Party Pak
Atari Collection 2
Fighter Maker
Final Fantasy Anthology
Intl Track & Field
Judge Dredd
Monkey Hero
MK Trilogy
Tomba
Who Wants to be a Millionare?

Japanese:
Not Treasure Hunter (Acty Art)
Gradius Deluxe Pack (Konami)
Aidoru Promotion - Suzuki Yumie (Alyume)
Toua Plan Shooting Battle (Banpresto)
Oukyuu No Hihou: Tension (Vap)
Wing Commander III (EA Square)
Gallop Racer (Tecmo)
Ongaku Tsukuuru: Kanadeeru 2 (Ascii)
Monster Farm (Tecmo) - the Japanese version of Monster Rancher
Dragonbeat (Map Japan)
Susume! Kaizoku (Artdink)
Tsuiridou Keiryu Kohen (Escot)
Virtua Pachisuro V (Map Japan), Virtua Pachisuro EX (Map Japan)
Konya Mo Senryobako! 2000 (Hearty Robin)

 

[Tabris]

Final Fantasy Anthology

This one is an easily fixable bug. Not a "can't play the game" fyi.

 

[Reilly]

I loved Tomba...

 

[maynerd]

No he says - at least I understand it like this - that it would have been a problem if ps2 was not able to run high profile games like GT.

What he tries to tell is that high profile games have to be working, then compatibility with lower profile games has to be investigated.

You either work for MS or you are clueless or both.

 

[gohepcat]

So they're worried about .7% of there collection not working? Give me a break.

He's spinning cause they're too cheap to pay nvidia.

Man you kids get so emotional over this stuff. It's just normal PR crap that everyone does.

 

[jiggle]

He needs to shut the hell up about PS backwards compatability.

If he repeats it enough, it will become the truth, to some.

 

[NintendosBooger]

I can't wait for the console war commercials. It's going to make the "Nintendo'nt" ads and Crash's invasion of Nintendo HQ look like kiddy stuff.

 

[mrklaw]

Man you kids get so emotional over this stuff. It's just normal PR crap that everyone does.

made all the more bloody annoying by Allard taking the moral high ground. "wah, Sony are playing politics", "wah, we're the most powerful", "wah, anyway its not about power its about the software"

 

[Amir0x]

Hahaha, he keeps trying to compare the Xbox360 situation with BC to the PS2 situation with BC. I find that pretty funny. I mean, it's one thing to spin false analysis to dumb/uneducated people when it comes to tech, it's another to spin something that pretty much anyone can verify is false if they like to

Let continue the war of words, Sony and Microsoft. This is entertaining as hell.

Guys, what do you expect him to say? I see a lot smiling and laughing goin' on when Sony claims the PS3 is 1% of a human and the 360 is simply Xbox 1.5...what is different here?

Sony did not claim PS3 is 1% of a human brain. A supposedly "random" British futurologist did. Unless there was a new article that claimed the quote came from a Sony representative, then it's not much use forming conspiratorial theories about it.

he is a liar.

You said it. Although, I wouldn't go out and out to try to slander him like that. It's his job to spin, just like it's Kutaragi's job to spin for PS3. It's deceiving, yes, so there's no denying it... but it's not like they are doing it maliciously. They just have a job to do, and that's to make each of their respective platforms a success

I thought everyone was expecting the PS3 to be easier to program for, has something changed?

We won't know until further down the line, but Epic had some strong positive words for developing on PS3. They got UE3.0 up and running on target PS3 specifications in 2 months at 60fps. They said it's a very developer friendly programming environment. Of most direct note is that since PS3 uses Nvidia technology, a lot of developers (especially on the PC-side) are already familiar with some of it, so the ease of it is significantly less than PS2, at least.

 

[gogogow]

PS2 is not fully backwards compatible with PS1.
How friggin many times has Allard said this? Like in almost every 360 interview conducted till now. And no interviewer, zero, had the guts to say: "Actually, there's only a handful of non-high profile games that doesn't work on PS2 (some are fixable by tuning the options)".
10 out of the 1500+ US titles that doesn't work.
I really like to hear what Allard have to say then.

*on a side-note, anything changed regarding backwards compatibility on the PS2 slim?

 

[Vince]

Common misconception but the SPEs do integer too, Mr. Allard..

Thank you! It's about time someone mentioned that in terms of actual Integer computation CELL beats the XCPU by a larger margin than SP-Floating Point I believe.

But, what do we know? Microsoft's ATG released a slide which showed that they have 3 PPEs to CELLs 1, so it must be 3X.

PS. AFAIK nVidia is stopping shipment to MS in Q3 of this year. Although the number of stockpiled ICs is unknown.