1UP talks with Microsoft's Jeff Bell about Gates, Mass Effect, format war

Near the end of CES 2008, 1UP was given the chance to have some one-on-one time with none other than Microsoft executive Jeff Bell (he's their Corporate Vice President of Global Marketing for Microsoft's Interactive Entertainment Business, to be exact). The gaming community was first introduced to Mr. Bell at Microsoft's Electronic Entertainment Expo conference last summer during a maybe-too-scripted segment about Madden NFL 08. The unintentionally comical bit prompted expected ribbing and Photoshops from the gaming peanut gallery -- which then resulted in an otherwise insignificant comment on a message board becoming a thing of gaming legend.

In any case, as one of the guiding hands for the Xbox brand over the next few years, 1UP were certainly interested in understanding where Bell believes Xbox 360 is headed in 2008 and beyond, whether Warner Bros. Blu-ray exclusivity announcement changes their plans in the ongoing format war, knowing his thoughts on if the Wii "bubble" will burst in the next 12 months and 1UP might have even picked up some honesty about that whole message board thing.

[choldstare]

The guy in the picture looks scary.

[00]

to lock your children doors and windows at night.

[Lord Anubis]

this caught my eye:
"1UP: How does having Electronic Arts acquire BioWare and Pandemic affect your relationship with the Mass Effect franchise going forward? Does that mean you wouldn't have a say in, for example, Mass Effect 2 going multi-platform?

Bell: Obviously, we couldn't have a better partner acquiring one of our partners. EA is really strong in our relationship, whether it's on the sports side or on their other incredible franchises like Rock Band. We do very well with them, they know us very well. [With] Chris Satchell's group with SDK and development kits, [we have] very, very deep relationships to make sure their games play best -- 60 frames per second on Madden versus 30 frames per second on our competition, etc.

Whatever the future holds for Mass Effect, we know it's going to be part of our future, as well. We just look forward to making it an even better game that what is obviously an extraordinarily great game right now. "

[we have] very, very deep relationships to make sure their games play best -- 60 frames per second on Madden versus 30 frames per second on our competition, etc.

[captainpwn]

EA paid $300M to aquire Bioware. If Mass Effect is their biggest franchine ATM, why on earth would they keep it exclusive? I can guarantee you Mass Effect 2 will be on PS3. It's EA for god sake.

[mikeslemonade]

That basically confirms that the 360 is getting mass effect, but they have no control on where it goes after that. It can go on wii and PS3 and they don't have a say on it.

"Whatever the future holds for Mass Effect, we know it's going to be PART of our future, as well."

Why didn't he say something like this "mass effect is currently a xbox 360 exclusive".

[smokeb4]

why would ea do that? dont they have stocks u always have 2 sell more the next time around dont make sense 2 me hopefuly 08 will see some change cause i like madden .

[ElementX]

The interview was a good read. Bell seems down-to-earth.

[captainpwn]

He might be the only guy at Microsoft besides Major Nelson that isn't a total @ss hole. I completely hated Peter Moore. Just the way he spoke and acted, he thought he was so big and nothing could stop him. Poor guy works making games for PS3 now.

The few guys from the game companies that I like:

Jeff Bell, Larry Hyrb(Major Nelson), Jack Tretton, Phil harrison.

I really can't stand any of the other PR guys who act like nothing is better than their console. Jack Tretton may have attitude, but he can usually back it up. And, Phil Harrison is the most down to earth guy working at Sony. Watch some of his interviews and you'll see he acknowledges Microsoft's success and doesn't pick on them for the red lights, broken XBL, etc.

[gamesR4fun]

than an interview imo a whole lot of editing and writing went into this..

still nice to see m$ take a humble approach heres hoping they kill that rrod issue and keep putting out great games

ps free online gaming already m$

[DJ]

"[we have] very, very deep relationships to make sure their games play best -- 60 frames per second on Madden versus 30 frames per second on our competition, etc."

He circumvented the HD-DVD questions very impressively though, and even used it as a chance to promote HDi. HDi was rejected by the BDA, which ended up using Java instead; Microsoft thus went through a lot of trouble to impose HDi into the HD-DVD format when they revitalized it back in 2006.

[xunderx]

what is that all about?,,,,,,,,,sorry,,i konw that answer,,, $....

i 4got,,,,,,,,,very, very, deeply sorry.

[kevin1122]

i think its silly talking about madden and how it was 60fps vs 30fps for the ps3 when the first iteration of madden for the 360 was 30fps as well.

[Salvadore]

Hmm...

[wageslave]

Regarding Scene It:

"It's perfectly structured, ultimately, for downloadable content, being able to choose films from different genres or different periods of time, to be able to continue to have fun with that trivia and to use the big button and scale those applications. That's one trivia type of application, there may be more in the future."

That is a very telling passage. I expect online trivia contests -- maybe ranked real-time matches like you see in pubs, *that* would be a great party game.

Compete as a team against teams elsewhere, online? Keep rankings? How about use that as a "training ground" for a Xbox LIVE Original Game Show?

I forsee MS really bringing great new things in this space.