Approaching the Xbox 360's third year on the market, Microsoft Game Studios boss Shane Kim has a tricky task on his hands.
Microsoft's console has proved an unquestionable success with hardcore gamers - after all, its star titles are Mature-rated shooters Gears of War and the Halo series. But now, in the heated up battle against PS3, Microsoft Game Studios has to reach out to a new audience, and in 2008 it's taking steps with family games like Viva Piñata and Banjo-Kazooie.
At the company's spring showcase in San Francisco, we managed to squeeze in a chat with the Microsoft games boss, who answered our questions on this year's Xbox line-up, competing against PS3 and those motion controller rumours.
What do you consider to be the star of your 2008 line-up?
Kim: I don't like to pick between my children, but I think Gears Of War has the potential to be one of the biggest releases this Fall. We sold over 5 million units of the original Gears of War - we now have a much larger install base and that combined with what Epic have been able to do I'm pretty excited about what it could do.
Fable 2 I think will be huge also, we have high hopes for what Peter (Molyneux) has achieved.
Those are our biggest titles for Fall 2008.
GTA IV has just come out, how do you plan to keep pushing that on Xbox 360?
Kim: I just read that apparently 65 percent of GTA IV sold is on Xbox 360, which is huge. That's a huge victory for us. I'm pretty sure that a lot of the people that have bought GTA IV own it on two platforms but they are prering to buy it on Xbox 360. And of course we have exclusive downloadable content - and we'll be pushing that very heavily.
Sam Houser made a comment recently that Rocktar would be pushing it as much as a standalone game?
Kim: I think it's a great opportunity for them to take advantage of what is possible on Xbox 360. Clearly not every game can do what Rockstar can do with GTA IV. They're going to make money out of having it on Live - but not every game can make that kind of investment. they're going to be pushing it very heavily and we'll be working with them to do that.
Dennis Dyack mentioned that the Too Human trilogy would unfold over the next seven years - do you see the Xbox 360 being around for that long?
Kim: Absolutely. We said from the beginning that we expect the Xbox 360 to have a long tail. Clearly we didn't do that with the original xbox, which was a strategic decision we made. Admittedly, we don't have any experience doing this, but we're pretty confident 360 will have a long tail.
How does this long tail work with regards to developers comments that not having a hard-drive in some of the models and a DVD drive is a restriction - do you have any plans to address that?
Kim: You're going to continue to see technical innovation, it might be additional capabilities to the current format - but honestly we haven't made those kind of decicions yet.
As far as technical limitations? We're not seeing those. I think there's the potential for more multi-disc titles, we've already shipped a few of those already. But I don't this is so drastic that people will start saying that Microsoft made a mistake not using Blu-ray. I just don't believe that. what we've been able to see with the vast majority of titles on Xbox 360, is really great experiences not really constrained with the lack of a hard drive or a larger capacity disc.
I think we will probably see more games release on multiple discs and the challenge is then for the developers to create an experience that doesn't involve a whole bunch of constant disc swapping.
Sony has said that PS3 sales have surpassed 360 sales in Europe and analysts are suggesting the same will happen in the US this month - do you dispute that?
Kim: With respect to the sales the race is very tight so your talking about 10000 units here and there, that's not going to reverse the install base we already have. With regards to the European numbers, I think we've got to look at the data and see what it says, because everyone like to quote their own numbers.
I can tell you that since we reduced the price of the Xbox 360 In Europe we've seen a lot of reinvigoration of the install base and seen sales pick up - our challenge of course is to sustain that. the launch of Grand Theft Auto IV has certainly helped us in Europe - and in the US as well. So that combination will create momentum for us for a while. And that'll get us to the Fall when eevryone starts releasing their big new titles and we'll see what happens.
Halo and Halo Wars... where are they?
Kim: We're not showing Halo Wars here today because we wanted to focus on these titles. When we do show titles we want to show them when they are ready. We've learned that from a few games we showed to early, like Too Human. We want to make sure when we show you guys products we put our best foot foward, because when we do go to early, you tell people what you think of it and that influences other people.
I'm excited with the progress we've made - Halo Wars is a lot of fun to play - but it's not ready to show yet.
But you showed it at E3 2007 and Leipzig...
Kim: Yes, but in a controlled fashion. Here we wanted to do more hands-on time and Halo Wars isn't ready for that. I think you'll see, when we show it again, it's evolved a fair amount. It's a mix of multiplayer and single-player and we want to show them at the same time.
What about Alan Wake?
Kim: The same goes for Alan Wake, we're managing that very carefully with Remedy. When you can announce a game and get people really excited about it, the last thing you want to do is show it before it's ready. Alan Wake is pretty ambitious, in terms of what it's trying to do. It's taking a very different approach to storytelling and gameplay and it's taking a lot of work to get it right.
How's your relationship with Bungie going?
Kim: Still good. It's an arms length relationship, but we still work very closely together - they've just released a new set of downloadable content for Halo 3 and we continue to work with them on projects like the Peter Jackoson project, so our relationship is still strong. It's gone the way we'd hope it would go. Once we decide we were going to part company we always said we wanted to maintaim a long term relationship with Bungie, and that's what's happened.
You mention the Peter Jackson project - do you have any plans to have him make games with you in the same way that EA have with Stephen Speilberg?
Kim: Well, he is working with us but not in the same way as Stephen is working with EA. our partnership with Peter is taking a master story teller and bringing him into our world. No disrespect to Stephen, but there's a lot of movie guys that want to make games, like John Woo for example. But our deal with Peter is not about a movie guy making a game. What we've talked about - and he agrees with this - is how we can use Live as a medium to introduce episodic interactive storytelling. There's some people in our industry who can tell stories - but they're not Peter Jackson.
What's the official line on the rumoured motion controller that Microsoft may or may not be working on?
Kim: Well, the stock answer is that we don't comment on rumours and speculation. But I will say, look, we have a lot of reasearch and development going on all over the place, in Live and in Harware and we have a ton of success in the accessory business - and that's probably a story that doesn't get told enough. From a commercial perspective and also in terms of critical acclaim.
We're going to continue to look at new ways we can introduce different things - the third parties are doing this as well with the music controllers. So there's opportunities for us there too. We're an R and D company at heart.
Japan: is it still an important terrirory for Xbox 360?
Kim: It's still important for us to have a presence. I mean, we have a reasonable install base there. For us we said we'd make a big investment with Sakaguchi-san with Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey, and while those were well recieved critically in Japan they didn't buy us Xbox 360 sales.
What will help us in Japan ultimately, will be success in the west. Because the bulk of the content has to come from Japanese publishers - it has to be content that Japanese consumers want to play. we've already see this withe developers like Tecmo and Capcom - they see the success that we've had in North America and Europe and they know they've got to run businesses.
We'll continue to look for new oppotunities in Japan and we've got a few irons in the fire there that we're still pretty excited about, but you probably won't see us release anything speicfially for Japan. There's a lot of great talent in Japan, so we'll just take a more global perpspective to development.
Last year at E3 Scene It was part of your plan of attack to reach the mass-market. How well do you feel you've done that?
Kim: I think it's a multi-dimesional challenge for us. Clearly Scene it alone is not going to do it and neither is Viva or Banjo. The fact of the matter is our core title are Halo and Gears Of War so we have a mature rated brand out there. So marketing is definitely a challenge, we have to work out how to make the brand more appealing and that's what we're doing... there's actually a lot more choice here today than just Gears Of War 2.
Third parties are supporting us too fantastically with a broad catalogue - you just have to look at Guitar Hero and Rock Band, and the success they enjoy on our platform.
And price point is another issue, we have to get to a more mass-market pricepoint. So I don't think there's one silver bullet. You know, I wish we had the 'Halo' for that audience.
Sony have kind of cleared up on this front with the success of Buzz and Singstar (especially in Europe) and you seem to be relying on third-parties for these mass market appeal titles that aren't even exclusive to 360. Why aren't you developing your own SingStar and Buzz?
Kim: Who says we're not? (Laughs) I agree, I understand in Europe particularly Singstar and Buzz have been huge. Of course that's a position of strength for them in Europe, which is making it more difficult for us. We just have to keep plugging away and continue to think about new experiences that take advantage of the unique capabilities that 360 offers. So Live is the big platform for us, and I know it isn't as big in Europe as the US, but I think that can change as well. And we have to look at ways of making it attractive to people so they will want to pay the subscription fee.
Going back to the motion controller rumour it must be tempting to try and do something similar to capture some of that market - but wouldn't it come across as a bit 'me too'?
Kim: Well, you have to be careful about doing the me too thing. But what's interesting is that you have a lot of third parties that are trying to rush to the Wii phenomenon, but if you look at the data, the vast majority of software that has sold on Wii has come from Nintendo. So it's not turned out to be a great third party eco-system.
So it could work if you had something that had a great third party eco-system. Having said that, our unique perspective is going to be online oriented for better or worse. In the same way that Sony is Blu-ray and Nintendo is the motion-control, our thing is online. And each of these has strengths and weaknesses in different markets of the world. whatever we do has to take advantage of our unique capabilities.
Which is why we thought it was weird when we heard the motion controller rumours...
Kim: I agree with you. But I've never heard of a motion sensing controller... I don't know what you are talking about...
interesting interview. He actually sounds like a pretty sensible guy, and isn't just quoting the 'we're the best' line that most PR folks do. Though I'm not sure he's quite on the ball with some of his comments, time will tell, I guess.
But really CVG, you need to work on your proofreading. There's typo's all over the place in there
But really CVG, you need to work on your proofreading. There's typo's all over the place in there
Yeah, there were a LOT. Surely an automatic spell checker would pull out some of those. Whatever - adequate proof-reading is not why I visit a website.
I kinda like this guy, the interview was pretty entertaining. A few things in there that raised some questions though - he sees Xbox360 being around for the entire 'Too Human' trilogy, which is stated to take 7 years. By my reckoning, that gives the 360 a 10 year lifespan... Personally, I can't see this happening, but this is certainly interesting when you consider Sony have stated many times that they have a 10 year lifespan planned (and been lambasted for it - by me included).
But really CVG, you need to work on your proofreading. There's typo's all over the place in there
Yeah, there were a LOT. Surely an automatic spell checker would pull out some of those. Whatever - adequate proof-reading is not why I visit a website.
I kinda like this guy, the interview was pretty entertaining. A few things in there that raised some questions though - he sees Xbox360 being around for the entire 'Too Human' trilogy, which is stated to take 7 years. By my reckoning, that gives the 360 a 10 year lifespan... Personally, I can't see this happening, but this is certainly interesting when you consider Sony have stated many times that they have a 10 year lifespan planned (and been lambasted for it - by me included).
Hmm...
Id want to see Gears 3 on the New Xbox really.
Hopefully theyd be using Blu-Ray (of course they can have around 5x as much stuff)
Plus wed have better AI, Better Graphics, Wider View Range etc from the new Hardware.
Sort of like Killzone 1 to Killzone 2 or GT4 to GT5...
"I just read that apparently 65 percent of GTA IV sold is on Xbox 360, which is huge. That's a huge victory for us."
I'm now going to emphasize one word.
"VICTORY"
How could you class it as a victory? They've got more consoles out meaning they have a larger install base. A "victory" would be around the 85-90% mark.
If 65% is classed as a victory then I see it a shallow one at that. Ecspecially with a 16* month lead on the PS3 they should surely have many more customers.
Also, Microsoft heavily advertised GTAIV for there console AND they havn't shut up about the "exclusive" DLC. The only advertising for the PS3 version was in the Metro! (The Metro is that free paper you grab in the morning.)
At last, an update on Alan Wake. Not exactly what I wanted to hear, but hey at least its still there.
From what I have read online I reckon that this could be huge game for MS and although it pains me to say it as its taking so long, with a game like this "Its ready when its ready" is the only way to go.
BTW: Liked the interview and he seems a pretty decent guy.
I like this guy-he seems sensible, and seems to recognize the good points of the opposition, rather than just big up the 360 and claim it is the best thing since sliced bread (and what a good console that was ) I like people who aren't overly biased-his confidence for the 360 doesn't appear to be arrogance.
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