Microsoft's head of the Interactive Entertainment business, Peter Moore, typically chooses his words carefully, and rarely makes the kind of outlandish statements that Sony's Ken Kutaragi seems to provide on a regular basis. However, in a recent interview on U.K. site Kikizo Moore issued some comments regarding the Xbox 360's backwards compatibility that immediately caused gamers to stir.

"Nobody is concerned anymore about backwards compatibility. We under promised and over delivered on that. It's a very complicated thing... very complex work. I'm just stunned that we have hundreds of games that are backwards compatible," he said.

Initially MS only promised that "top selling" Xbox titles would be playable on 360, but as time went on MS reps have stated that the ultimate goal would be to provide full backwards compatibility—something that competitor Sony seems to strive for in each console generation.

Moore's comments shouldn't be misunderstood. MS will be adding to its backwards compatibility list, but it hardly seems like a priority now that the 360 is hitting its stride and the original Xbox is getting less and less support. Moore added, "More [updates] are coming, but at some point, you just go, there's enough, let's move on, or people aren't as worried about a game being backwards compatible - and I like to think we've upheld our end of the bargain in making at least two or maybe three hundred games backwards compatible."

If MS isn't able to provide backwards compatibility for the majority of the original Xbox library, the advantage in this area almost certainly will go to Sony. Currently Sony is promising more than 99 percent backwards compatibility and PS3 users will be able to play both PS2 and PSone software. Meanwhile Moore thinks MS "over delivered" but there are a number of popular first- and third-party Xbox games that are still not playable on the 360.

In the interview Moore also addressed concerns over the Xbox business not yet being profitable. "Profits will come, but investing in making things work, work well, and having a competitive advantage is what's important now," he said. "We're a long-term thinking company; we make big bets. I think [shareholders] may challenge our execution, but they know this is a monstrous growth opportunity for Microsoft, and we need to do it."

And if there was any doubt that Moore is now the "face of Xbox," replacing J Allard, he had this to say: "J is busy... poor old J! [laughs] J still runs platform development for all of the stuff that we're doing, [but] has a different role than he had in the past. This whole idea of 'J, Robbie, Peter'... it's easier if they just push me up front and I do it, it's my responsibility to do it. J is a very busy guy."

In the rest of the interview, Moore discusses PS3, Blu-ray, HD-DVD, Live Anywhere, and more.