Microsoft has announced that titles aimed at hardcore gaming enthusiasts are much easier to sell than those directed at the general consumer.
The company’s incoming motion control hardware, codenamed Project Natal, is pinned to bridge the divide between these markets by offering a more accessible gaming experience Microsoft spokesperson David Dennis told GamesIndustry.biz recently.
“The core are going to buy the games, we don’t have to focus on marketing those – well, we do, but those games in a lot of ways will sell themselves because they’re such immersive and intense experiences that the core is going to buy, and buy disproportionally for the Xbox,” said Dennis.
According to the Dennis this represents the strategy that Microsoft has been following during the lifecycle of the Xbox 360 – first by capturing the attention of the hardcore gaming market and then catering to the more fickle, yet lucrative casual market.
“It’s a continuation of a strategy we’ve been articulating for a long time, which is that we have a powerful piece of hardware that enables a lot of different experiences, let’s start with the core users to really get their attention and get them invested and committed to us as a platform. Then as we look to broaden to new audiences, we have the hardware capacity and technology innovation to continue to evolve the experience.”
Microsoft’s recent addition of social networking platforms such as Facebook and Twitter to the console’s Xbox Live service is a good example of how the company plans to capture the casual market. Project Natal is also slated to claim a portion of Nintendo’s market share when it is released in 2010.
Earlier this year Sony also made the announcement that it would be delivering a motion control system for the PS3 in 2010, suggesting that it too has a adopted a similar sales strategy to Microsoft based on the idea that gaming enthusiasts are easier to sell to.
Despite its fickle nature the casual gaming market is by far the biggest. To date Nintendo has far outstripped both Sony and Microsoft with regards to console and title sales.
Hardcore gamers easier to sell to says Microsoft
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