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Microsoft's Shane Kim on 2006, Xbox 360 first party support, and the PS3
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industry
posted by: Chris Martin
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date posted: 09:42 PM Tue Mar 20th, 2007
last revision: 09:52 PM Tue Mar 20th, 2007


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Click to read.The next gen war is not going away any time soon. And in 2007 through 2008 things are going to get pretty messy, you can count on it.

In an interview with GameDAILY.biz, head of Microsoft Game Studios Shane Kim talked candidly about his competitors and the quality of first party support across the board - concluding with the fact that he believes Microsoft can go \"toe-to-toe\" with Sony\'s first party games.

It\'s a pretty good read, and if you\'re a Xbox 360 owner like me you might be interested in Kim\'s confidence with what he considers to be the next \"big sellers\" for the system; mentioned are Halo 3 (obviously), Mass Effect, and Lost Odyssey.

There\'s a neat section on taking risks in the gaming industry with different IPs, for all the companies. And Kim\'s conscience gets the better of him when GameDaily sets him up to rag on Sony.

Overall, it\'s a pretty middle-of-the-road safe interview and most of what you\'ll read here has been stated elsewhere by other people (or at least rumored online).

What is interesting, however, is that Kim talks about the possibility of an Xbox 360 price cut if Sony slashes the price of the PlayStation 3, stating that he believes selling a system is about the content and the price. Here\'s a sample:


BIZ: Hypothetically speaking, if Sony lowered the price, do you think that Microsoft would try and take away their thunder with a price cut on the 360?

SK: I don\'t think it\'s something that we would necessarily react to. First of all, you don\'t know necessarily what the magnitude of their price cut would be. I mean, there\'s a $200 difference today. Are we talking about a $100 price cut? Are we talking about $200 price cut or more? I think that\'s one of the factors that you obviously would have to look at. The other factor is we have a great deal of confidence frankly about what we offer to customers today, and even if we had price parity with PlayStation 3, I think we\'d feel pretty good about the competitive situation head-to-head there in terms of the entire program, because it\'s not just the cost of the hardware as you know.


Go ahead and jump to the interview.

-Chris

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