Stolen from a Gamespy Warren Spector interview. It's interesting how he says that consoles have the innovative edge over PC's. IMO PC's were definitely more innovative in the early to mid 90's, but there has been stagnation over the last 2-3 years. Not to say that I hate PC gaming or anything, as DX2 is still my most wanted game for this year.;)
How do you feel about this?
GameSpy: Why did you originally decide to do an Xbox version? Was that merely to reach a larger audience?
Spector: Well, there are a couple reasons for doing an Xbox version. What most people don't understand, probably because we never actually talked about it, is all of us here have been making PC games for many years, but we're actually console gamers as much as we are PC gamers. I've always had every console available from day one. And to be honest, most of my gaming is done on the console, especially since that seems where most of the innovation seems to be. So there has always been this desire, and until recently, no one was foolish enough to give us enough money to show that we can do it.
Now, however, we have a publisher in Eidos that supports us in our efforts. We also have consoles that are powerful enough to actually support the kinds of gameplay that we want. It's not like we are willing to compromise our gameplay ideas to actually squeeze onto a box to reach a larger audience. I tell folks at Eidos all the time that we're making decisions here everyday that are probably costing us sales, but there are things we want to do, that we feel we have to do that, and we're just going to do. Frankly, if you want something else, we may not be the right people to do it. So we kinda had to wait for the console hardware to catch up with our ideals, I guess. Now that we're there, we really can make the kinds of games we want to make. We can make them work on the PC, and on the Xbox, without compromise.
GameSpy: It's interesting that you say that console games currently have the innovative edge because certain people are saying the exact opposite, especially in Japan where they are in a bit of recession -- the games market is horrible. Japanese companies like Sega and Nintendo are scrambling to find what the consumer wants because the same old rehashes of RPGs and action games aren't selling as well anymore. They're starting to have a creative mid-life crisis in video games. So you think that consoles are the most innovative platform out right now?
Spector: I think the bulk of innovation that I see is coming on the console side. I think it's been a real dry spell for the PC. DDR didn't start out on the PC. Ico is not a game that anybody in the PC world was going to make. There are countless examples of exciting games: Mr. Mosquito, Ka? no one was going to make a game like that on the PC. There are plenty of people taking some big risks on that side. Not of the ocean, but on that side of the hardware ocean. Boy that was very bad ... [laughs] Anyway, but you know what I mean, I look at the PC world and it's like, "Do I really need to play another action role-playing game where I get to run around and click as fast as I can? Do I need another shooter with more cooler-looking enemies, and bigger, more badass guns? Do I need another real-time strategy game?" Somebody's gotta do something new and different, you know? And I see it happening on the console side. I really do.
GameSpy: Do you think the United States market will eventually be in a crisis, like the one that currently exists in Japan, if companies keep resorting to clichéd ideas?
Spector: I think we're already in a world of trouble in the United States. The costs of doing business and the risks are so high that everybody's getting super conservative. You know, how many games with numbers after their name did you see at E3? I say that realizing that we're doing a sequel to Deus Ex and a sequel to Thief here. I hope that we're taking a few more risks as a result of having that security that comes with Deus Ex: Invisible War and Thief, the third in the series. I think we're still trying to be innovative, but I wish I saw more U.S. developers going out on a few more limbs. I think we're already there. We're in trouble if we keep on rehashing what we've already done.
