E3: Allard downplays graphics, talks creativity

Speaking in an exclusive interview, Microsoft's J Allard has downplayed the importance of graphics in the next generation of consoles - saying that it's creativity, not visual quality, which will sell the next 100 million consoles.

"We can't get all hung up as an industry and say it's all about graphic fidelity," Allard commented. "I kind of put the 'does it look better?' secondarily. Not because it's not important, not because I don't think we're not going to have a system to do it, but because we're almost good enough."

"We're almost at the point now visually where we're like, in videogames, do we need better visuals than what we saw on Monday night?" he continued. "A little bit. It's not the thing that's going to sell to the next 100 million people. The thing that's going to sell to the next 100 million people is creativity; creativity for labouring, creativity from a designer's point of view and so a hard drive can provide those tools."

You can read the full interview with J Allard on the site today.