Five Years of Xbox 360

Neil Thompson and Stephen McGill discuss the past and the future of Microsoft's console

Feature by Dan Pearson Contributor

Published on Dec. 6, 2010

GamesIndustry.bizWhat's the software attach rate been like so far?

Neil Thompson

Very good, but I can't share the numbers with you. To be honest, we're very happy with it. Retailers are telling us they're very happy with it. We think it's a vibrant platform for software. As we go into the next year and beyond, we think the creative juices of developers have really been stirred, and people are talking about some really amazing things coming out. We're feeling very good about where the software is today and where it's going in the future.

GamesIndustry.bizAnd how about the ratio of solus Kinect units sold compared to bundles? Do you know how many people have been buying a 360 purely to use Kinect?

Neil Thompson

Yes I do, but that's not information I want to share! We have a very significant install base, we're going to have a lot of people who want to use Kinect. That's the joy of Kinect - that you can use it with any Xbox. We do have a lot of people who will use it with their existing Xbox.

It is fair to say we're also seeing a lot of new customers coming to the platform as well as customers transitioning into the new form factor of the console - they love it and they think it's a great ID. It's a combination. It's hard to say at the minute because the sales rates are so strong that what we're putting out there is selling through. To give you consumer behaviour flavour is quite hard at the moment because we're selling pretty much everything we're putting out there.

GamesIndustry.bizDo you think there'll ever be any peripherals for Kinect?

Neil Thompson

Well, one, not that I know of and two, not that I can think of at this moment. A lot of the idea of Kinect is that you just need you. As people apply their creativity to this, I honestly don't know what the future holds, is my honest answer.

People say, what are the sorts of experiences that you see on Kinect in the future, and I think that they're fairly boundless, given the things I hear back from developers and games publishers. So I don't know is the honest answer, but if you think about what the principle of what Kinect is, it kind of takes most accessories and unneeded peripherals away from that interactive experience.

GamesIndustry.bizI wanted to talk briefly about the concept of 360 and MMO. Previously, as I understand it, the barrier to having an MMO on the 360 has been the subscription payment model - does the current trend towards microtransaction models change your position?

Neil Thompson

If I'm honest with you, I'm not super-close to knowing if there would be anything happening on that. Stephen, do you want to say anything?

Stephen McGill

There's nothing that we'll talk about specifically in terms of announcement stuff - I think you're right to point out microtransactions, some of the more casual games... People think about MMOs, they tend to think about hardcore adventure type games from a PC background. I'm not sure that that sort of future on Xbox is the right one or not.

I'm a hardcore gamer and I love those sort of games and I know my friends who are more social gamers probably wouldn't play those games, whether they were on Xbox or not. So I think you've got to look at who the audiences are on different platforms and make sure you've got the right games for those players. Having social experiences, maybe that a few people can get involved in - absolutely.