Mattrick Returns: Mattrick And Moore Discuss His New Position At Microsoft
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GI: Thats exciting. You have Halo in the stable. Whats the next big thing from Microsoft Game Studios?
Peter Moore: Well, Crackdown just shippedand by the way is doing phenomenally well. Were getting calldownswell, were 48 hours into it, but the numbers look very, very strong. Then were of course youve got Forza 2, youve got Mass Effect, youve got Too Human, Halo you mentioned. Youve got Project Gotham Racing 4there a tremendous slate of titles from MGS in there. And also exclusive to the platform this year will be Bioshock and the next Splinter Cell from Ubisoft. And of course, old news now, but GTA4 day and date was very important to us for this calendar year. All signs are Rockstar will be able to deliver in October, as per their commitment last year. So, I add it all up together, and Im able to bring the thread that is Xbox Live across all these experiences and then add Shadowrun into the mix, which will be the first cross-platform game for us, that will also come from MGSIm feeling pretty good about the content lineup. I probably missed a title or two there, but those are the titles that spring to mind now that I think are going to continue to move the needle forward in calendar year 07.
GI: You worked up in Vancouver before, thats where you were located, right?
Mattrick: I toggled between San Francisco and Vancouver, but Im Canadian and Vancouvers home. And this role allows me to continue to live in Vancouver, and its an easy commute to Redmond. The logistics work well.
GI: Definitely keep us in the loop as things move forward. Good luck with the fine studio youve got there. You two will cause a lot of trouble there, Im sure.
Moore: Theres no doubt well get into it a lot. We couldnt be more excited to have Don on the team. It really rounds out what I think is one of the best teams in the industry at a time when we really need to drive forward into this next level. I think this holiday is going to be very, very important. Its going to be fascinating to watch and see how things shape up between not only the three big console platform holders, but as third parties start to place their bets, which theyre doing. The Windows platform is heading into a renaissancewere excited about where were going for Games for Windows. Bringing that together, as Don points out, we have a tremendous stable of assets that will allow us to provide a little bit of leverage in areas where our competitors cant. Were excited about that.
GI: I think youve had great successespecially with some of these first-party games. We were excited about Crackdown, no doubt. How do you plan to sell game to a broader audience outside the hardcore, which I think youre fantastic at. Xbox Live screams to hardcore gamers. A lot of your titles from first party, save Viva Pinata, are definitely for the hardcore gamer crowd. What is Microsoft going to do to attract the larger, casual scene.
Moore: Its a great question. Youll be hearing a lot more about it in the next month or two. We have always had the focus on what we calledI dont know whether Ive sat down and talked about the first two holiday campaigns with you, but when we started building the strategy back in 2003, early 2004, we realized that the first 15 months, knowing what our ship date was even back then, would be critical to continue to recapture whats called the hardcore gamer, and we want to make sure that we continue to have that sort of person on our side, because theyre very important to the overall ecosystem.
Then, coming into this holiday, we realized we needed to build an approachability story that was going to be important as we were attracting a different consumer in holiday 2007 and on to 2008. This is even before the Wiithe Wii was still the Revolution, and nobody knew anything about it. We recognized that both our strengths with Xbox became our Achilles heel with Xbox 360 in that we had built a very legitimate gaming device that had been taken to heart by the hardcore guys who when Microsoft announced the Xbox were very skeptical about our ability to deliver real gaming experiences on the console. I think we put all of that to rest very, very effectively and repositioned the brand. We went from black to whiteits brighter and more optimistic brand. Weve done an incredible amount of work with the third-party development community to make sure were well positioned to have all of the right content, the E and T content thats going to be important in the out years in our platform. From a first-party point of view, its not just about E-rated games, its going to be about the experience that, quite frankly, Nintendo has done a tremendous job in capturing, in bringing back funif you willto the gaming platforms. But weve got a few tricks up our sleeve as well to be able to do that. Its not something that were going to be shy about, and its not something that were not painfully aware of that needs to be changed by this holiday. That has been the strategy all along, and well be making some more announcements in the coming month or two. I think youll see how serious we are about that.
GI: Im glad to hear you didnt say Fuzion Frenzy 2.
Moore: I didnt say Fuzion Frenzy 2, though I think its getting a bad rap. But anything thats got 40 little minigames in it, as simple as they may beits actually a fun multiplayer game. You know, its not Fuzion Frenzy 2. Its actually not games. Its more experiencial than that. And again, since the day I saw Iwata-san pull the nunchuck controller out from under his podium a few years ago at TGS, Ive always realized that was the right thing for Nintendo to have to do for what they needed to do to be successful in this next generation. And it was always going to be a challenge for us. So, we have plans. This does not come as a surprise. Our strategy has been laid out for us years in advance, and youre going to see some of that this next holiday and beyond.
Mattrick: One more thing before you hang up. Think about what Microsoft has accomplished in the console space in the last six years.
GI: Its pretty impressive. Theres no doubt about that.
Mattrick: When you look about it and think about the length of time Nintendos participatedor other companiesnobody has had a faster, stronger start in a shorter period of time.
GI: You have been very quick about getting into the market and becoming a playerat least in the United StatesI wont bring up Japan. I think Europe is certainly a challenge in the long term, and certainly too, at the same time, youre trying to change the way people are also playing games. Theres many reports about getting people just used to buying games in the digital download service in Xbox Live. Thats got to be quite a challenge.
Moore: Its about choice. A lot of people dont connect their Xboxmaybe as big as 40% of the Xboxes out there are still an offline experience. And thats perfectly fine. People are comfortable with that, and thats what they want to do. The people we think are the future are the people who do connect their Xbox and want to build a sense of community around that, and things like achievements, which I think are going to be a really big story this year, when the truly multiplatform games come out and gamers who may have two consoles in the home are going to have to make a choice. Achievements, and you see a lot of stories being built around achievements, are something I think has captured the imagination. They become a tie-breaker at times.
But digital distribution is coming. All three consoles have some form of it as you know. Xbox Live Arcade is, I think, the premiere way were looking at digital distribution, which is, if you will, more snack-sized games rather than full downloads of multi-gigabyte gaming experiences. Also, demos, I think youre exactly right. People expect to get those in real time--and I dont want to knock the magazine business--but not having to wait for a magazine with a disc attached, and the ability to connect to consumers delivers a great experience for them. Crackdown is a good example. In the last two or three weeks since the demo was available, weve seen preorders go through the roof, and its directly attributable to being able to deliver a demo to consumers in real time to their hard drives that they can play, and that diverted the sales back into the retail channel. So youve got this blend of digital distribution, but other things are benefiting from it.
GI: Its one of those things where everyone has a different way they want to play their games, but Im excited to see how Shivering Isles does and the episodes coming up. Its going to be interesting to see how people handle it.
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