Microsoft’s Shane Kim sat down with GamePro at E3. Part 2 of the interview is just surfacing on their website. One of the more important revelations from the interview was that Microsoft does not plan to phase out the Core system. “It’s definitely here to stay,” Kim said. “We’ve got a great line up from Core to Elite, and there’s that set of customers that want the lower price point who want the vast majority of the functionality of the Xbox 360, and you get that with the Core. And you still have the option to add storage and wireless controllers with it if you want so for a lot of people getting in at $299 to a high def experience that’s awesome. Obviously there are other consumers that want more storage and greater capabilities etc. The Xbox 360 or the Elite are going to be a great option for those folks.”
GamePro then touched on the failure rate of the Xbox 360. Kim doesn’t believe that Microsoft rushing to market in 2005 had any negative result on the hardware. “You know I’m not a hardware guy, and I think it’s fine to speculate that it might have contributed to the failure rate. But at the end of the day, what you’re talking about is a very complicated piece of consumer electronics. There are 1,700 components, 500 million transistors, and it’s just a very complex high-end piece of machinery. It’s very unfortunate, and we’ve apologized to consumers who’ve had issues,” he said.
When asked whether Microsoft planned on broadening their market like Sony has into handhelds, Kim used it as an opportunity to say that they are “focused on winning this generation. That’s what we want to do. Getting into the handheld market is like launching an Xbox 360. It’s a complete platform program, and you better be ready to fight the war on two fronts. As far as I’m concerned Sony and Nintendo can continue to beat each other up in the handheld market. [PSP] has to be a big distraction for Sony.
What Sony has done with the PS2 is what we want to accomplish with the Xbox 360. That’s what winning the generation means. We want to sell 100 million Xbox 360s, and we want to do it for a long time. The goal is to win the generation. It is interesting to note, that even thought the PS2 continues to sell well, people aren’t buying a lot of software for PS2. For the PS3 I think there’s a huge problem. To take a price cut this early in the life cycle… what does that say?” Kim asked. It’s worth noting that the original Xbox dropped in price a full $100 within 6 months of launching in 2001.
Many people were upset that Microsoft shortchanged the original Xbox in 2005 when they dumped their first console in favor of the 360. According to Kim, “we didn’t stick to a time table moving from the Xbox to the Xbox 360. It’s all about strategy and what the competition is doing, and what the company’s larger objectives are. For us we’re very clear cut and very focused; win this generation. That’s why launching when we did in 2005 was so important, I think it’s given us a big advantage, especially over Sony.” If there was a big advantage, as Kim says, it has since been washed away with the Wii now just several hundred thousand units behind them and the PS3 nearing 4 million.
