Much of the press conference for the Xbox One reveal focused on television and other services, but that didn’t worry Activision Publishing CEO Eric Hirshberg. He sees the Xbox One as “a game machine first and foremost” and thinks there’s a “false divide” relating to how people enjoy entertainment.
“I don’t think competition for different forms of entertainment in the living room is anything new. People can watch TV in their living rooms now,” said Hirshberg. “People can listen to music in their living rooms now. There’s a false divide that gets created in people’s minds sometimes, as though hardcore gamers don’t also consume other forms of entertainment and wouldn’t appreciate those things being made more seamless and more integrated into a more elegant experience. I think that’s all that you’re seeing here. To me, as a gamer, I’m excited by it.”
Hirshberg was also excited over the new Kinect. “I made a passing comment that you’re going to see voice integration, voice commands via Kinect, which is something that we haven’t done in the past with Call of Duty. We think the improvements to Kinect really excite us because of the level of responsiveness and detail. I thought that the demo they did with the voice commands on television, the instant changing between games and music, was really compelling. You’ll see more of this coming from us as we get closer to the launch,” Hirshberg said. “Obviously, we didn’t reveal that element today. We just mentioned it. But we’ve always made sure that we don’t just use new technology for novelty’s sake. We always make sure that it makes the gameplay better. In this case, we think it will.”
Source: VentureBeat