Xbox boss confident of holiday win

The “Halo” franchise has arguably been the crown jewel on the Xbox [platform.] I don’t think there’s any dispute there.

Absolutely. But I don’t think we’d be enjoying the success we have if we just had “Halo.” We have “Halo” and an amazing lineup of content both from our first-party and our third-party lineup of partners. There’s 50 great games on Xbox 360, and “Halo’s” the pinnacle. I do agree with that. But what’s causing the critical mass … inside of our business is the fact that there’s “Halo” and 49 other really high-rated games.

Tracking ahead to exclusives for next year, what does Microsoft have on tap?

There’s a collection of exclusive and third-party hits, and we’re going to have a similar year to what we’ve enjoyed in 2007... We’re excited about “Grand Theft Auto [IV],” not only because it’s a great title, but there’s multi-play and downloadable content that consumers will only be able to get on 360.  That’s a huge win. Arguably that title has the potential to be the “Halo” equivalent in calendar year 2008 in terms of number-one title revenue unit. 

Sony is predicting that its tech for the PlayStation 3 will have the same lifecycle as the PS2 – roughly a decade. Do you think the 360 will have a similar shelf life, and moreover, do you want it to?

I think it definitely has the potential to have a similar shelf life. When I think about Microsoft, I think about an organization that has spent eight years inside of this category. Getting the original Xbox to market was a challenge, the company did that and achieved the goals that it set out but really hadn’t built the critical mass and muscle as it thought about the challenge of running an Xbox program and a 360 program at the same time.

So the company made a choice and said, “OK, we’re transitioning, we’re now going to be building Xbox 360 and continuing to scale the organization.” We’re at a point now where we’re eight years in, and there’s more resources, more third-party support, more retail support and more consumer support. And it’s very probable that this will be a longer life cycle.

I would argue, and I said the same thing to [Sony’s] Jack Tretton, that the success of the Wii, which is undeniable, and the DS, which is also undeniable, would lead me to believe that the mainstream consumer doesn’t care so much about high quality graphics. They just want fun gameplay.

We need to have fun games and I think we do. Again, our industry is getting to be a broad global industry. Nintendo traditionally, if you look at their company, they’ve done very well having fun games aimed at youth … we’re trying to build fun games targeted at youth and teenagers and adults. It’s a broader vision.

Xbox Live has been a phenomenal success…but the title lineup consists mostly of classic arcade game ports and few original IPs. Is that something that you plan to change, or do those arcade-y games that work for this forum?

First off, I think it’s incredibly hard to create a community that touches 8 million-plus. I wouldn’t want to move past that. In terms of the content and what we hope to do in the future … we want to continue to build that out in all fronts.

Games for Windows Live is quite a bit behind where Xbox Live is. Why is that?

We’re going through the natural learning curve of growing our products and offerings …  Is it where our program is on 360? Definitely not. Do we aspire to get to a similar level of success in the future? We do.

While we’re on the topic, has Microsoft made the sort of progress with (Games for Windows) that it was promising? Seems like games are still slow to come to the PC, and not many are yet taking advantage of DX10 and Vista.

I think there are some samples of success. Would we like to have more? Yes we would. We’re working with our third-party partners to get more support. We have a good level of support already but we’d like to have a high degree of support and as many titles on Games for Windows that we can get to. 

Short term and long term, what are your plans for growing the business, expanding things you’ve done particularly well, improving things that have been neglected?

I think we’ve got great fundamentals, and we’re going to continue to drive against those fundamentals to over-deliver value and satisfaction to consumers. [We have] the best and broadest lineup of hits, the best hardware, the best live service, and as we continue to expand that live service between the 360 and the PC … That’s the business that we’re in. I’m really pleased with how we’ve assembled the component parts for this holiday season and what it means in terms of our ability to grow in scale as we look into 2008.

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