KINECT LAUNCH GUIDE INTERVIEW: CHRIS LEWIS, MICROSOFT [INDUSTRY VIEW]
Brian Farrell, THQ, CEO
“With all respect to Microsoft, Xbox 360 now is very much a core gamer box. And the fact that they are really trying to broaden their audience with Kinect is something we support because once you have got past a certain level you need different consumers, and Kinect should do that. We are a big fan of that. Anything that tries to expand the market for the publisher is perfect.”
When Xbox 360 launched consumers had to buy many of the components separately. But when Kinect launches you have a special 4GB 360 bundle that includes everything in the box. Is this a change of strategy? The watchword for what we have been synonymous with is choice. We haven’t forced our consumers down a
[INDUSTRY VIEW]
Jens Uwe Intat, SVP Europe, Electronic Arts
“Kinect is about games that we can’t even imagine today. The real strength will come to bear with titles where you only use your body. Dancing and fitness are excellent examples for launch, because they are genres where you would prefer not to have any devices in your hand. Strategy might even work well – I can easily see you intuitively orchestrating a game with your body. And that new way to look at how you would, for example, direct a football team is going to open new ways to play those games and, again, get new audiences into gaming.”
particular path, we’ve let them build their own Xbox 360 experience. I’d argue that it is still true. We have the 4GB bundle, which is a one-package opportunity for families. However, Kinect is fully compatible with existing Xbox 360s. We are trying to give choice, but where somebody wants a simplistic package, we want to offer that, too. I want to assure you that choice is still central to what we offer. We don’t say: “You may not want all these things, but you’ve got to have them.”
How do you hope Kinect will impact console sales? We will definitely sell more units in this fiscal year than we did in the last one. We have big ambitions for what Kinect will do. There are more than 40m people in Europe that have a gaming machine in their house, but have not been interested in Xbox in the way we feel they now will be with Kinect on the market. It is a huge opportunity for us and we have very ambitious targets for growth. The other thing that Kinect does
is broaden out the lifecycle, which I think we are only about half-way through. And our partners and third-party developers love that, because that gives more longevity for them to create great games on Xbox.
You’ve sold 42m Xbox 360s in its first five years. Can you manage it again over the next five? Yes, if not even more.
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