Games Interview: Microsoft's chief Xbox officer - the GDC interview (part one)
[Computer Buyer] 11:27
'It's a great time to be in gaming,' boomed a confident Robbie Bach, Microsoft senior vice president and chief Xbox officer, during his keynote speech at last week's Game Developers Conference in San Jose.
Unveiling his company's next-generation software development package, XNA, Bach, assisted by chief XNA architect J 'Mr Xbox' Allard, laid bare comprehensive plans to ensure the continued success of the Xbox brand and eventual (Bach believes) victory over Sony in the next generation.
Delusions of grandeur? Well, despite Sony's clear dominance in the market, the general consensus is that, with XNA, Microsoft has struck a significant blow in the next-gen race; it's hard to fault the company's efforts to facilitate development on its future hardware platforms, something that is certain to give Sony cause for concern.
Shortly after Bach's keynote address, we were fortunate to pin the elusive CXO down for a rare interview with the consumer press. Today we present the first part of the frank, far-reaching discussion, where Bach further explains the thinking behind XNA, the convergence of Xbox and PC online gaming, and the shock departure of ex-Microsoft Game Studios head, Ed Fries.
Isn't there an element of marketing with XNA. Part of your strategy seems to be to 'stick one on Sony' - a lot of developers are unhappy with PS2; is this part of your thinking?
Bach: If you step back a little from today's specifics, the point I want to make is, looking to the future, what's going to make the difference in the next generation? It's our claim that software will make the big difference in the next generation.
XNA is just one example of that; the ultimate outcome of XNA and what we do should be better games. If we can create an environment where people can create better games in more economic fashion, we're gonna get the better games on Xbox.
Think about Live and online - that's another software difference. For us, the strategic way to think about this is Microsoft is about software and how that can make the gaming experience better and Sony thinks it's about faster more complicated hardware.
Back to your question about there being an element of marketing - I guess there's an element of marketing in everything we do; if you're gonna do a big speech in front of 2,000 people there's going to be a little of that.
I think really what today was about was making clear our intentions to everybody - to the development community, to the publishing community and the middleware community - that we are serious about creating an architecture where software and middleware tools can flourish and where game development costs can be managed a lot better and where we can still produce amazing quality games.
Do I have a 2,000 word spec for XNA? No; and if I told you the answer was yes you should be very, very worried because that would mean I haven't talked to the middleware guys, the third-parties, the tool providers.
The secret to making XNA successful is going to be the work that they do and the feedback they give us and how it should evolve from the basic framework that we outlined today.
The basic framework we understand very well; exactly what the format and the protocol should be - go and talk to the middleware guys to get that right. We want XNA to be an industry initiative, not a Microsoft initiative.
One of the things you talked about at CES in January, which was also touched on today, was broadening the demographic. So far Xbox has been marketed in an aggressive manner to the hardcore male audience; even today's presentation was preceded by male-oriented thrash-metal.
One of the things Sony has done particularly well is, realising that PS2 effectively hit its technological ceiling a while ago, it has introduced things like EyeToy which have broadened the market massively. Then there's been the Dancing Stage phenomenon and the forthcoming Singstar which are bringing a lot of female gamers into the fold. How do you intend to tap into this audience?
Bach: Both of us have made different efforts to broaden the market: we have Music Mixer, they have EyeToy - EyeToy was certainly a good product; I'm not going to tell you it wasn't. That said, even the things we said today have a lot to do with how we figure out how to broaden the market.
It's very hard for the creative people to broaden their sites and do creative things when they spend 80 percent of their time getting plumbing done right.
And then you have publishers who are understandably nervous about taking risks on new concepts; well, in a world where there's XNA and they're working on the concept at 20 percent of the way in, and a publisher can look at it and see where it's going, see it's interesting and continue to invest, then it's our hope this will lead to more creativity.
We'll certainly try to supply that with our own first-party work that we do, and our first-party studios will be focusing more on those kind of things.
It's part of the reason why we didn't just show three crash-'em-up demos. We have one of those - you've gotta have one of those - but Film Noir was about character development.
Why isn't there more character development in games today? And what does that do to the audience when you have more character development? It's just like movies: you can have shoot'-em-up movies, or you can have movies that have characters and rich development - they attract different audiences.
Same thing with the animals: what kind of audience does that bring?
So you see character development as the way to bring female gamers to Xbox rather than something like EyeToy?
Bach: It's an aspect of what you have to do. There are things you have to do which are in the broader entertainment space; there's things you can do on Xbox Live to broaden the audience.
Turns out with Windows today, 60 percent of people playing online games are women. And the reason for this is they're playing puzzle games, strategy games, card and board games - they're playing different styles of games.
But they love the experience and they won't let you take it away from them. We need to think about that in the context of Live, and the context of what we do with Windows and see how to bond them.
Sometimes people think that broadening your audience has a silver bullet; that there's one specific thing you can do to attract all these people. I don't think that's the case at all - I think there's multiple things to do. XNA's part of that; it's going to enable people to be more creative and spend more time on the creative concept.
New things like Music Mixer, like EyeToy, are great for the industry as a whole and will start to broaden the audience.
How we think about the social environment we create in Xbox Live is part of that; how we bring some of the magic that Windows has in that space and vice versa is part of that.
Frankly, and to your point earlier, some our marketing has to reflect that; our marketing has not been broad audience marketing - it's been very gamer focused. You really have to take all the pieces of the puzzle and be persistent about it for a long time to break out of that space.
The good news is that we know we have to do that...
Can we expect an imminent change in your marketing strategy to reflect that?
Bach: That's something that's going to take a period of time. You've already seen the first of those changes, the move towards 'It's good to play together' - the idea of social gaming being at the heart of what Xbox stands for.
Now what has to happen is you start to plant that message, we have to form it, shape it, expand on it with the products themselves and bring it to life.
Things like that don't happen with one campaign; they happen over a series of campaigns. That's one of the things Peter Moore will be focusing on a lot in his role running worldwide marketing - how to broaden that brand, continue to build that brand.
This is a place where Sony has a time advantage, since it's been working on PlayStation brand for eight years - we've been working on the Xbox brand for two and a half years. It's part of the natural evolution of what we do.
It seems Sony sees PlayStation 3 as serving as a hub in the home - is that something you agree on for the next generation of hardware?
Bach: No, that's actually probably one of many areas we disagree on. It's our view that, when people say: is Xbox at the centre of Microsoft's home strategy, we say no. I think our Media Centre PC is much more likely to be the centre of the home than Xbox.
The reason for that is, the thing you want at the centre has to be a rich, multi-purpose device, a place where you can store all of your media, recorded TV shows, video, photos, music; it has to be a place where you can edit those things. It's got to manage the network, take care of all that stuff.
The PC is the only device that's designed to do that. If Sony wants to take PlayStation 3 and design it to do that, that'll be fine with me as the price point will be $600-700 and they won't get any installed base and they won't have great games for it.
You have to decide which track you're on and our view is that Xbox needs to be a great entertainment device connected to that Media Centre PC.
If you want to use Xbox to play back a TV show you recorded on Media Centre PC you should be able to do that - we've already shown that technology at CES this year, where you'll be able to use Xbox as a connector on the other end of a Media Centre network. You should be able to do that.
Does that mean we want to have all the infrastructure to be able to record those shows and do all that stuff on Xbox? Well, you can't do that at price points consumer want for a games console. Our view is that Xbox needs to continue being a great gaming console, it just happens to be a connected gaming console that lives in that broader environment.
One of the other significant things you mentioned today was bringing 'Live' to Windows, which suggests an aim of both Xbox and Windows users able to play each other online?
Bach: That's a whole different point. It's a separate point from the device as a whole so let's look at them separately. We think the logical centre of the home is a Media Centre PC and Xbox is the logical entertainment device connected to that centre.
Xbox will focus on being a great videogames console and related forms of entertainment, but it's not some big centrepiece. That's the first point.
Today we announced we were bringing the Xbox Live tools developers use from Xbox to the Windows environment. A game on Windows that wants to have friends lists can do so easily; a game on Windows that wants do billing can do easily; a game on Windows that wants to have a single log-in can do so - a company could have five games and you could have one log-in.
Will software be released under the 'Live' moniker on PC?
Bach: Because these are tools it will be under the XNA framework and I think that will be exciting. Now, you asked an additional question which is: will Windows gamers be able to play against Xbox gamers on the same game.
That's something we've had feedback from people on, and what we're going to do following on from today is we're going to talk to game developers, designers and player and ask if that's something they want or not.
It turns out I can make scenarios where it might work and create an exciting experience; I can also create scenarios where it's a crummy experience. If you're playing a game where speed matters, and someone's got a faster PC than I've got on Xbox - nobody wants to be in that experience.
On the other hand, if you're in a role-playing game, where performance matter a lot less, and it's about the social experience and the interaction, maybe that makes sense.
We've got to figure out what makes logical sense and what makes a good game, not what's technologically possible - it's always been technologically possible to connect a Windows and Xbox game. We need to think more deeply about that and decide which direction we want to take it in.
When Ed Fries he said he was looking for more freedom and had felt restricted in his role as head of Microsoft Game Studios. What did he mean by that?
Bach: That's a good question, probably a better question to ask Ed. I think part of what's challenging is that we have a very specific focus for what we want out of Microsoft Game Studios.
When we started on Xbox we needed MGS to produce a lot of games in a lot of genres because we weren't sure how much third-party support we were gonna get.
We've now come to realise that, because we're getting such big third-party support, MGS doesn't need to be producing 20-30 games a year. What it needs to be doing is producing great games that define the platform; that means pure games, a higher quality bar for the games and a focus on taking advantage of the cool things the platform enables.
I don't know whether that's related to what Ed's thinking or not, but it certainly defines a more specific purpose for what we want MGS to accomplish, and we're on track with that.
That's true on Windows by the way; we get tonnes of game support on Windows so we don't want MGS to be producing games in every category. What we need is things that show off how great a platform the Windows environment can be for gaming.
Have you spoken to Ed since he left?
Bach: I saw him about three and a half, four weeks ago; Ed and I used to work in the same office; he and I have worked together for a long time. We had a big farewell party with a bunch of guys from the office. We brought out the rip-off version of Frogger he did - I forget which platform it was for - and someone was playing that.
They had some stuff he did in Office - we had a great time. We gave him a special edition Xbox that was in a really cool white case with a note from the team on it. Then he was going on a three week vacation and I haven't seen him since then.
Whatever you do, don't miss part two, where Bach discusses the possibility of a handheld Xbox, his vision for the future of gaming, and his masterplan to beat Sony with Xbox 2.
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/?http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/news_story.php?id=55740
The second and final part of our revealing, in-depth interview with Microsoft's senior vice president
19:07 March 2004 has been and gone, with Microsoft very much making the month its own with a stirring display of intent at last week's Game Developers Conference in San Jose.
Despite going to remarkable lengths in order to avoid the specifics of next-generation hardware, Microsoft did, to all intents and purposes, show the first Xbox 2 software demos, albeit running on a souped-up PC (see here.)
Today we have the concluding part of our interview in which Bach makes startling claims for Xbox's future success, speaks on the possibility of a handheld console and outlines his vision for the future of gaming.
The types of developers who will gain the most out of XNA are the small developers, as the big guys tend to have their own tools and engines they've invested in. Would you say that's fair?
Bach: In a way yes, in a way no, so let me qualify it. Certainly the small developers do benefit as it allows them to prototype games much faster, they can go to a publisher with a level really developed so the publisher can see what the game is really about without too much investment. That's a big win.
It also means they don't have to spend a lot of money creating their own tools so they can get their creative stuff done faster. For those developers it helps.
When you go to the larger developers, in one way it means there's going to be more competition from other guys - true. But a lot of those guys are also in the tools business - think of the guys at Epic - they're in both sides of the business, and what they do is create a lot of their own engine work.
But they don't do everything themselves, they buy stuff from other people, so they're going to benefit from XNA tools. Plus, we're creating a market for them to create their tools and broaden that market for them. So in a way they benefit as well. Is there more competition? Sure, but they will benefit from it.
Then if you talk to a big publisher, who are also the other big developers - take someone like EA; I saw a quote from them this morning and they said: if [XNA] improves the quality of development then those are games we can publish; if I have more to choose from in terms of what I have to publish - they publish a lot of independent games - then if there's more independent games for them to choose from, it's good business for them too.
Certainly it plays out differently for different people, but I think there's an opportunity if you look at it overall to help the whole ecosystem - everybody has a role to play.
Presumably you see XNA as a great way to generate more Xbox exclusive software?
Bach: Independent of XNA, we'd like more exclusives - that's a great goal! Certainly what we're trying to do is get more support behind our platform, that's absolutely true. Do we hope that more of those games will be exclusive? Sure.
It's all about great games, and if the developer can say: hey, I get the best tools there, I can do the most there, I should do the game on that platform, then great.
The other thing it does which I think is a small subtlety on what you said is, it also may influence where people do the game first. Even if someone decides to port something they do using XNA, it's going to be optimised around the work that we do. Today more of that initial work happens on PS2 than on Xbox and we'd like to change that.
What's your vision for the future of Xbox software?
Bach: One thing we didn't talk about so much this morning, which I'll come back to now, is a richer set of genres. Think about the music world: when I think about music, there's classical, jazz, r'n'b, country, rock, pop, rap - there's a huge number of things that are all 'music' targeted to different audiences and all pretty different in some ways.
If you go into the videogame space today, we have different genres, but I will tell you that the range in my view is relatively narrow - it's kind of like we have rock and pop and that's as far as we got.
One of the things we hope is that we get into a world where there's country & western, where's there's jazz, r'n'b - and back to your point on broadening the market, we need that kind of diversity to attract new customers, women, people of different ages, people of different technology capabilities and experiences. I think that's one area we did cover this morning, but it's important to highlight it.
Can you be more specific in relation to these new genres?
Bach: OK, here's my thing; I'm gonna try this one out on you! [laughs] The ultimate is when you have - don't take this in the sexual way - the equivalent of a love story. The equivalent of a story that has the depth of character involvement, the depth of communication, the depth of social experience that can bring.
You have that in various forms on TV: the goofy form which is reality shows, the serious form which would be serious drama. When you can look at a game and say, gosh, there's drama in that game, that to me is a big [thing]. Today I think there's excitement, there's fever pitch points, there's all those kinds of things; but if you were classifying videogames you wouldn't say you had things in the drama category, or things in the human emotions category - that's not where we are today.
That's the ultimate goal: there's no reason why interactive entertainment can't be in that space just like music is in that space with ballads, movies are in the space - there's no reason why we shouldn't be there. It's just time, creativity and the right tools.
You've repeatedly stressed you're not going to be beaten to the market this time and will fight toe-to-toe with Sony. Specifically in the UK, sales of PS2 versus Xbox, even though many PS2 games are looking clearly dated next to their Xbox counterparts, PS2 is still outselling your machine by roughly 2.7-1 week on week on average.
Bach: We're about 25-30 percent share, which gives you some idea.
But it's still almost three to one...
Bach: It's a big number, I'm not disputing that. It's a big number.
Given that, what are your realistic expectations for the next generation? Where do you expect to be at by the end of it?
Bach: One of things you have to keep in mind is that, in this generation as it always has been in the past, installed base drives a lot of behaviour. It's difficult within a generation to break that advantage once somebody has it. That's been true every generation: there's sort of a topspin to more installed base, breeding more games, which breeds more installed base. It's difficult to break through the cycle.
In fact I'm very happy and impressed we've been able to get to 25-30 percent share starting development probably three years after Sony did. When we think about the next generation, nobody should be confused: we're in the game to win.
I don't think it's, ooh gee, we can add another five points. We want to be there to win.
Do you seriously expect to outsell PlayStation 3 with the next iteration of Xbox?
Bach: "Expect" is an early word to use at this stage, but that's our goal. You got it.
What about the Japanese market?
Bach: I think the challenge with the Japanese market is in some ways to [pause] is to find our place in the market where we can have a successful business. Do I think we can have the same scale of success there we have the possibility of having in North America? I think it will be hard, no question.
We're at less than five percent share today, and in Europe and the US we're between 20-30 percent, depending on the market. We just have further to go. But there are intermediate points in the Japan market, and so our goal is going to be to improve the business and that starts with better content. If we can get better content in the Japanese market place, we think we can make a dent.
Do I think we have the same possibility of winning? I suppose yes, but it's certainly going to be a hell of a lot harder.
You believe you will win in Japan?
Bach: That's what I said, it's going to be a hell of a lot harder. I wouldn't be quite as bold in my predictions for there as I would be with North America, though.
Where is Microsoft at with handheld gaming?
Bach: The company is doing a fair amount with handheld, not so much in gaming, but more in music and movies - the portable media centre in the works that we're doing there, and some of the things we're doing on cellphones.
Now XNA is an architecture that we'll carry forward into the mobile environment. I think much more likely initially for Microsoft is casual games: things you do on a cellphone, things you do on a PDA.
Do we have any plans today to go compete with whatever PSP [PlayStation Portable] is going to be or whatever Nintendo DS is? No, we're focused on making sure Xbox and the next generation are successful.
Going the way of PSP and DS is another business entirely - it's not an extension. It took Sony almost ten years to do it and in effect it's the second time they've tried, so it's clearly hard.
Is a handheld hardware platform part of the '20 year plan' you have for Xbox? Does it figure at any stage?
:Bach: [long pause] I'd say it's possible, but it's not something that's on the drawing board today. We're focused on what we've got. But the mobile platform, Win CE, Pocket PC, SmartPhone - that's a big part of our road map, and that's a very committed road map. Having something that is dedicated to the [handheld] gaming space: it's certainly something that's possible, but it's not something that's part of the road map today.
With the next generation, many people were expecting something today, but you've steered very clear...
Bach: We've tried to be as clear as we can! [laughs]
And you have, absolutely! But, we were speaking to a developer in possession of an Xbox next-gen SDK [software development kit] on the showfloor and they claim that Microsoft has told them nothing concrete is going to be said on Xbox 2 before the summer.
Do you therefore feel it would be inappropriate to specifically talk about next-gen hardware at E3 in May?
Bach: We haven't finalised what we're going to say at E3. Obviously if you think about the next generation you have this double-edged sword that you have to pay attention to. On the one hand, it's really important for us to have great future business for Xbox today; the best product we can support is the one we have today and we want the installed userbase to continue to grow.
If I talk to my publishing partners they want to have a great holiday '04, a great holiday '05 with the existing platform. On the other hand you have the desire to communicate and start laying the foundations, building some of the buzz and giving people a sense of what the future's gonna bring.
We're going to have to be very careful about how we communicate that balance.
Is Xbox 1 on its own strong enough to deflect attention away from Sony's PSP this E3?
Bach: We got plenty of things to announce at E3... It's not going to be a question of having news, it's going to be a question of choosing what news. That's the interesting thing.
Johnny Minkley
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