Peter Molyneux: Next Xbox should focus on ‘playing games’

When it comes to Microsoft's next Xbox, there's a lot of speculation going around. Most of it seems to circle back to Microsoft's goal of creating a "central entertainment hub," or a console capable of serving your every need: playing games, streaming movies and television, browsing the internet, and even ordering pizza. As lofty as those visions are, Peter Molyneux, former creative director of Microsoft Games Studio turned mobile director, fears the company is losing sight of what truly matters on a home console: the games.

“What I would do is double-down on what this console is for: it’s for playing games," Molyneux told Edge. "It’s for playing console games for this massive, incredibly loyal audience of gamers out there.

"When they start to mix all this other stuff in there I’m kind of slightly like: ‘look, I don’t want another way of looking at Facebook’. You know, I’ve got all the ways of looking at Facebook. I don’t want another way of looking at Netflix. Just give me what I’ve paid my £299 for, and that is to play amazing, incredible computer games," he concluded.

As we quickly approach the next generation Xbox unveiling event one has to seriously wonder whether games will be the central focus of the presentation, or whether Microsoft will spend the majority of its time trying to sell us on SmartGlass or the Kinect as the way of the future. Look, I've had enough experience with barely functioning Kinect apps to realize not everything is "better with Kinect." And ya know what, ordering pizzas with my phone is just as satisfying. Supplementary features are nice, but it seems Microsoft is keen on convincing the general consumer that a home console is about more than just playing games when really that's all the majority of us want from it.

[Edge]