“I was brought in to start throwing punches” – veteran exec Peter Moore reflects on the particular set of talents Microsoft needed to make Xbox 360 challenge PlayStation 3

Former Xbox boss Peter Moore has recalled why Microsoft poached him from Sega to head-up the company’s Xbox 360 charge. He had experience launching the Dreamcast, yes, but more alluring seemed to be his experience of being part of Sega’s battle in a console war. Microsoft needed someone to take the fight to Sony and PlayStation.

“Look, I’m not a self-described nerd,” Peter Moore told me as part of a larger interview, part-one of which you can read now. “And Microsoft was very much a company that was seen as guys with pocket protectors and thick glasses.

“We needed to bring in different people that could stand on stage and throw punches at Sony and be a little bit more aggressive in a different way, and had experience of taking on the PlayStation, which I did, obviously, during my Sega days. So I was not the stereotypical quintessential Microsoft employee. I was brought in to create strategy, lead on stage from the front, be a little irreverent, maybe get a tattoo or two… I was brought in to be part of a very talented team and, like I say, to start throwing punches.”

Remember, Moore was well trained in this aspect. He’d spent years heading up Reebok and battling sports giant Nike before he moved to Sega, so he knew how to scrap for market share. As he explained to me: “There’s only 100 percent market share, and so the fight you have is to win hearts and minds. And it’s a battlefield. There’s no two ways about it.”

This console war we feel the echoes of now, then, between PlayStation and Xbox – it was in some way deliberately stoked and perpetuated by Peter Moore and Microsoft. “This became the console wars,” he said, “where we, Microsoft, were coming from a position of newcomer and nerdy and not an entertainment brand, and we needed to build a separate brand called Xbox that would not only make hardware but software and services.”

Xbox being separate from Microsoft was a key distinction they needed to make. It’s why any mention of Microsoft’s name tends to be nowhere near anything related to Xbox. “Not be ashamed of being part of Microsoft,” Moore said, “but if you look at the packaging, and you look at our marketing and everything we were doing during that time: sure, if you looked hard, ‘Microsoft’ was there, but it was really building a brand that would be sustainable for decades to come. And as we sit here today, in 2025, we did.”

During Moore’s four-year tenure, Xbox gained significant ground on PlayStation, and inked historical deals such as securing Grand Theft Auto 4 for simultaneous Xbox 360 release – a deal Moore announced by revealing a GTA 4 tattoo on his arm during a press conference. Xbox also launched powerful brands that it’s still milking today, such as Gears of War and Forza, as well as a host of iconic third-party games.

But this aggression and rivalry doesn’t seem to be a part of Microsoft’s strategy today, which has famously adapted to include publishing games on PlayStation hardware, including Xbox’s flagship brand Halo. It’s partially a concession to PlayStation 5’s dominance, and a move that would have been unheard of during Moore’s tenure, I’m sure.

“Does there need to be a winner?” he responded when I asked what he thought of Xbox’s position today. “If there’s somebody ahead, is the other guy a loser? We’re a $200 billion industry this year. If you define somebody as leading and somebody second, that company in second place is probably doing billions of dollars worth of business.

“And in the case of Microsoft, is having a place in gaming and a brand like Xbox and delivering entertainment experiences: does that somehow put – no pun intended – a halo around the broader Xbox? Go look at Microsoft’s stock price. Go look at what Microsoft has done since I left, and Bill left. I’d like to think Xbox was a little piece of the success that you now have with Microsoft.”