Former Xbox Exec Peter Moore Says He Did Encourage Xbox vs PlayStation Console Wars

by
William D’Angelo
, posted 1 day ago / 2,359 Views

Peter Moore, the former Xbox, Sega, and Electronic Arts executive, in an interview on Danny Peña’s YouTube channel discussed his time at Xbox and the console wars between Xbox and PlayStation.

“We needed to do a ton of missionary work in those days, and at the same time we were young enough to have fun, and do all the daft stuff that we did, and all the stunts,” said Moore (via VideoGamesChronicle).

“I think the console wars that you’re kind of alluding to were healthy for the industry. Look, I’ve said it before – certainly, I did encourage the battle, because I think gamers loved to see Xbox versus PlayStation, maybe Nintendo as well, and that I think was a rising tide that lifted all ships.”

Moore said the video game industry is in a different place and if Microsoft had a choice they wouldn’t make hardware anymore and deliver content directly to the TV.

“If [Microsoft] had the choice, would they make hardware? No,” he stated. “Would they be delighted if they could be a multi-hundred billion dollar entity delivering content directly to your television, to whatever monitor you choose to play on? You bet.

“You know, the classic Netflix model, you just select – ‘Who’s playing this? 5000 people playing this? I’m going to jump in right now,’ no latency, no lag, you’re in, and there doesn’t need to be a box between you and your controller and the TV set. But still, you know, consoles are – as we’ve seen particularly with Nintendo now – people love their hardware.”

He added, “The acquisition of Activision Blizzard changed things, I think – not I think, I know – at Microsoft. And so this is not the old days of the console wars, and punching each other, and trying to steal customers and trying to get market share and build your attach rate. This is bigger than that in an economic sense.

“Has it lost a little bit of the feistiness that the industry I think fed upon and grew upon? I think so, yeah.”

A life-long and avid gamer, William D’Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Bluesky.