This past weekend has seen commentary from a few people over at Microsoft on Revolution, or at least what bits we know about it so far. First up is Xbox Live Arcade group manager Greg Canessa with his take on the retro games:
"I think it was interesting to see Nintendo's announcement for the Revolution downloadable games service which, of course, came over a year after we launched our initiative internally and around nine months after we already launched the first generation of Arcade for Xbox. I think it was a responsive move. Their service is interesting in sort of a 'retro' way, but I view Arcade as being so much more than what they're planning on doing. Their service is kind of a subset of what we're doing...
"When I look at Nintendo Revolution's retro story, with all due respect to Nintendo, I think it's a small subset of the opportunity here. To be honest with you, a lot of those games are fun in your head when you think, 'Oh, yeah when I was 12, this was really fun,' and you have these great nostalgic reasons to play them. Then you do play them, and they're just not very fun anymore. But, there are some games like Joust or Gauntlet or Pac-Man that are as fun today as they were back then.
"A lot of those Nintendo games, you know, aren't gonna hold up."
Not long after, Microsoft head honcho Bill Gates and Home & Entertainment big cheese Peter Moore had their say in an EGM interview. Moore takes the more diplomatic approach:
EGM: What do you think about the Nintendo Revolution controller?
PM: I found it very intriguing, and I'm always a big fan of companies that try and innovate in a space where we need to do things a little differently. It still remains to be seen [how well it'll do], because there's no game to demo against it yet, to get a feel for it, but I still respect and admire the fact that they're willing to take what is clearly a huge risk to innovate. Let's see if it works out for them.
Gates, in the meantime, seems to still be convinced Nintendo is a non-competitor, placing them squarely in the "kiddy" arena — out of sight, out of mind:
EGM: Do you wish Microsoft had come up with the idea for the Nintendo Revolution controller?
BG: Uh...no. [Laughs] We'll watch and see. Holding two different things like that? Anyway, Nintendo...you've got to give it to them. They march to the beat of a different drummer. Sometimes that makes them incredibly right and sometimes that makes them incredibly wrong. They're certainly making a very different bet in terms of how much they're putting into the graphics this time. I do think there is a question as to whether they can get outside the young age bracket at all. That's been tough for them.