Brevity
05-16-2003, 07:32 AM
Microsoft's VP of game publishing talks about online console gaming, price drops and the competition.
By Steven Kent | 5/15/2003
One knock against Microsoft is that the company knows nothing about video games. Don't tell that to Microsoft vice president of games publishing, Ed Fries, however. Having published games for the Atari 2600 as a teenager, Fries considers himself well-schooled in video games.
GameSpy: Sony made an interesting move when it bundled the Network Adaptor with PlayStation 2. It almost seems like they were targeting Xbox with that announcement.
Fries: Yeah. We like that. One way you can tell who is leading and who is following is by how the participants act. We thought about what should be in our machine from the start and we built in everything that we needed. Now they've realized that you need to have an adaptor, so they're sticking it in their box.
I am sure that they will eventually realize that you need to have a hard drive and they will stick that in, too. By then, Live will be so far along [that it will not matter]. We're happy with our hardware, so we can put all of our effort into the software side.
GameSpy: Do you see XSN Sports as a major shaker?
Fries: I think of XSN Sports as an example of where we are going. We've talked about the "digital entertainment lifestyle," but what does that really mean?
Ed Fries talks candidly about the Xbox.To me, we started with Xbox, and then we added Xbox-Live so that you could connect the boxes together. How can we go beyond that to connect all of the digital devices that we have to use them for our purposes-for having more fun?
To me, if you are going to set up a league with your buddies, why not do it on the PC? Why not set it all up and be able to check it from any web device, then play the games on your console? It's just an example of how you can build an application on top of the Live stuff that we have already exposed. I hope that all the third-parties find other creative things to do.
GameSpy: You lowered the price to $179. Why? Fries: Sony has effectively lowered their price to $179. They are selling their current inventory at $179. They claim that they are going to raise their price back to $199 for the [PlayStation 2/Network Adaptor] pack-in. We don't really know whether that is really true or not.
If they are going to sell their console at $179, we'll sell at $179 as well.
GameSpy: Is Sony your toughest competitor?
Fries: Sony is our competitor.
GameSpy: Nintendo is not much of a threat anymore?
Fries: We're trying to grow. We're trying to be number one. We're clearly in the number two position right now, and we'd like to be number one one day. That is why we are focused on Sony.
GameSpy: Do you have much hope of taking over the Japanese market?
Fries: If we were number one in the United States and Europe and number two in Japan, that would be all right.
GameSpy: What do you need to do to be number one in the next generation?
Fries: We can't give Sony another head start. They had a huge head start in this generation. We need to continue to continue to build on the stuff that we have already built. We can't let Xbox-Live suddenly vanish. The great thing about what we are doing is that all of our innovation is in the software, so that innovation can carry through to the next generation. Live will be there from day one, and it will be there with all of the features that we have added to it over the next several years.
We've talked about Live Now and Live Web and Live Alerts, and all of these different ways that Live is getting better all the time. It's just going to keep getting better. We think of this being software innovation, that is what this business is going to be about.
By Steven Kent | 5/15/2003
One knock against Microsoft is that the company knows nothing about video games. Don't tell that to Microsoft vice president of games publishing, Ed Fries, however. Having published games for the Atari 2600 as a teenager, Fries considers himself well-schooled in video games.
GameSpy: Sony made an interesting move when it bundled the Network Adaptor with PlayStation 2. It almost seems like they were targeting Xbox with that announcement.
Fries: Yeah. We like that. One way you can tell who is leading and who is following is by how the participants act. We thought about what should be in our machine from the start and we built in everything that we needed. Now they've realized that you need to have an adaptor, so they're sticking it in their box.
I am sure that they will eventually realize that you need to have a hard drive and they will stick that in, too. By then, Live will be so far along [that it will not matter]. We're happy with our hardware, so we can put all of our effort into the software side.
GameSpy: Do you see XSN Sports as a major shaker?
Fries: I think of XSN Sports as an example of where we are going. We've talked about the "digital entertainment lifestyle," but what does that really mean?
Ed Fries talks candidly about the Xbox.To me, we started with Xbox, and then we added Xbox-Live so that you could connect the boxes together. How can we go beyond that to connect all of the digital devices that we have to use them for our purposes-for having more fun?
To me, if you are going to set up a league with your buddies, why not do it on the PC? Why not set it all up and be able to check it from any web device, then play the games on your console? It's just an example of how you can build an application on top of the Live stuff that we have already exposed. I hope that all the third-parties find other creative things to do.
GameSpy: You lowered the price to $179. Why? Fries: Sony has effectively lowered their price to $179. They are selling their current inventory at $179. They claim that they are going to raise their price back to $199 for the [PlayStation 2/Network Adaptor] pack-in. We don't really know whether that is really true or not.
If they are going to sell their console at $179, we'll sell at $179 as well.
GameSpy: Is Sony your toughest competitor?
Fries: Sony is our competitor.
GameSpy: Nintendo is not much of a threat anymore?
Fries: We're trying to grow. We're trying to be number one. We're clearly in the number two position right now, and we'd like to be number one one day. That is why we are focused on Sony.
GameSpy: Do you have much hope of taking over the Japanese market?
Fries: If we were number one in the United States and Europe and number two in Japan, that would be all right.
GameSpy: What do you need to do to be number one in the next generation?
Fries: We can't give Sony another head start. They had a huge head start in this generation. We need to continue to continue to build on the stuff that we have already built. We can't let Xbox-Live suddenly vanish. The great thing about what we are doing is that all of our innovation is in the software, so that innovation can carry through to the next generation. Live will be there from day one, and it will be there with all of the features that we have added to it over the next several years.
We've talked about Live Now and Live Web and Live Alerts, and all of these different ways that Live is getting better all the time. It's just going to keep getting better. We think of this being software innovation, that is what this business is going to be about.