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Former Xbox boss Peter Moore wholeheartedly admits that both he and Xbox "encouraged" the console wars, which he believes were – at least at a time – "healthy for the industry."
Moore served as Microsoft's corporate vice president of home and entertainment (overseeing Xbox) between 2003 and 2007, arriving a little after the launch of the original Xbox and being there when the 360 first released. This timeframe also coincided with the PS2 and Nintendo GameCube (and more briefly the PS3 and Wii), which were obviously big competitors, and at that time, Xbox clearly wasn't afraid to make that rivalry known.
Speaking in an interview on Danny Peña's YouTube channel, Moore is asked his thoughts on Microsoft's newer multi-platform strategy that's seeing the likes of Forza Horizon 5 come to PS5 next month, as well as Indiana Jones and the Great Circle at some point this spring. Releasing Xbox exclusives on rival hardware would have been unheard of in times gone by, but things have obviously evolved quite a bit since then.
"I think the console wars that you're kind of alluding to were healthy for the industry," Moore says. "Look, I've said it before, we just – certainly, I did – encouraged 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 says the situation is "different today," pointing to the acquisition of Activision Blizzard, which he says "changed things" at Microsoft. "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."
While Moore has clearly made peace with the idea that times have changed, he still admits that he thinks a "little bit of the feistiness" that the industry once "grew upon" has been lost. Meanwhile in the general gaming space, it doesn't feel like everyone has moved on from the console wars, but the battles (thankfully) don't feel as vicious as they once did.
