“You can view it as a franchise reset and an opportunity for a very talented development team to go in and deliver.
“It is a big bet for the year. Are we throwing everything and the kitchen sink at it? Yeah. We want it to be talked about everywhere. If you go back to 2007 when we launched Halo 3, it was all about being culturally relevant. I remember the stuff they did in the UK to make sure it wasn’t just gamers talking about it, everybody in mainstream was. That’s how you make a game big. Halo 4is more than just a game. It is a big piece of entertainment. A blockbuster movie. “Few games have sold what
Halo 3did. And If you look at platform exclusives, nothing is bigger than Halo.”
KINECT WITH THE CORE This year will see the second generation of Kinect software – and there’s not a dance game or sports compilation in sight. Instead, we have an RPG
(Fable), a mech shooter (Steel Battalion) and a title where players must pelt baseballs at an army of possessed carnival folk (Diabolical Pitch). “We were very deliberate in the way that we brought Kinect to market. We were clear that we had to appeal to a broader and more casual audience,” explains Lewis. “But the core gamer will always be an important audience for us – to a great extent they helped define where we are today. For us to meet our aspirations we want to appeal to all audiences.”
But is mixing titles like the family-
friendly Kinect Rush: A Disney/Pixar Adventurewith the hardcore Fable: The Journey, the right strategy? PlayStation told MCV this year that it will no longer try to be all things to all men with its motion controller, Move. Instead it is focusing on family audiences. Could it be that by trying to attract the core you could be putting off the casual player? “It does create a marketing challenge. We need to be careful not to alienate any audience with our marketing,” admits Lewis.
“But we are very targeted in that regard, and we have good data and feedback as to how best achieve it.”
LIVE IDEAS
One thing that does show Xbox 360 for the six year-old machine that it is, is its line-up. Historically, as consoles get older we see fewer new IPs, and that certainly appears to be the case at Microsoft’s Spring Showcase. The event was filled with leading brands and big blockbusters. At least, that was the case for the retail games on display.
If you happened to wander into the Xbox Live Arcade room, you’d find a plethora of quirky projects, from side-scrolling survival horrors to first person puzzlers. And these are the sort of games that would be seen as a risk on the High Street. Beinner says: “You could say it is safer to go digital, but it is less about risk and more a matter of: are we making the right game? I look at first party, and its responsibility is to do stuff that hasn’t been done before. First party doesn’t approach a development project wondering if it is safe, we’re wondering how we are pioneering for third parties to follow.”
LUCKY NUMBER SEVEN? Third-party support is going to be critical for Xbox if it is to grow again this year. Microsoft has already signed up exclusive content deals with Activision and EA. And we can expect even more.
Indeed, for all the focus we’ve just made on its first party offering, the biggest Xbox 360 games this year are likely to be the multiplatform titles – Resident Evil, Assassin’s Creed, BioShock, Call of Duty, Tomb Raider, Medal of Honorand maybe even Grand Theft Auto. But that in itself might pose a separate problem. Many of these
blockbusters are due to arrive over an eight week period
during Q4. That’s a lot of triple-A games to sell all in one window.
March 16th 2012 21 “
“I don’t see that ever being a problem,” says Lewis.
We need to be careful not to alienate any audience with our Kinect marketing.
Chris Lewis, Xbox
“I genuinely feel those games play better and show up better on Xbox 360. Our Live experience is enviable. We now have around 18m Kinects out there and about 40m people hooked up to the Live service. So for me I think that embarrassment of riches that you described can only be a huge opportunity for us to make 2012 a banner year.” If there is a new Xbox on the horizon, then Xbox 360 is certainly ending on a high note. But even with this admittedly impressive release slate, it’s still a big ask for Microsoft to defy this challenging market, and grow for a seventh consecutive year. Lewis tells MCVthat there “is more to come” and points to E3 and Gamescom. Perhaps we’ll see some more new titles? Maybe even a family-friendly price cut? All of that will certainly help. But even if Xbox falls short of its goal this year, there’s certainly a lot more life in the console. No wonder Microsoft doesn’t ‘have anything to announce’ when it comes to a new platform. Because right now, it doesn’t need one. Turn over for more on the big Xbox 360 titles coming this year