Microsoft has been pushing plenty of “casual” products onto Xbox Live in a bid to snag a portion of the casual gamer market pie. These easily accessible casual games, plus the Xbox’s alternative function as a home media centre, is just the kind of thing consumers will go for when upgrading their entertainment systems (at least this is what Microsoft hopes).
The Kinect motion control device will be arriving in November, and despite assurances from Microsoft that the hardcore crowd will love it, so far the line-up of available games is looking particularly ‘casual’ and Wii-like.
There is probably a bit of a misconception that the ‘hardcore’ gamers would neither dare nor deign to put down Halo: Reach for a moment, in order to try out some new motion controlled gaming gimmick. The biggest hurdle right now is probably the price.
Xbox Live studio head Jerry Johnson still thought it was important to reassure the ‘hardcore’ crowd that the Live team hasn’t cast them aside. Speaking at the Edinburgh Interactive Festival, he rhetorically answered his own accusations that Microsoft was starting to turn its back on the core gamer, and is more focused on the “Wii bunch” by saying: “My answer to that is an emphatic no.”
“The reason I say that is because I realise that Live was built on the back of the core gamer. It was built to benefit the core gamer, and it was built solely focused on the core gamer when it was originally launched,” Johnson continued.
“We also know that is our best advocate to continue to grow our user base and grow the engagement with Live.”
Johnson provided an example of how core gamers are helping to nurse in a casual crowd: “My wife never let me have an Xbox in the bedroom. When Sky launched all of a sudden she was like, ‘you can bring the Xbox in the bedroom. It’s okay because I can watch movies on them.'”
“My wife probably would have never found out about Sky or wouldn’t have known about it or wouldn’t have even entertained the idea unless I had been there and shown her some of these things,” Johnson reasoned.
“So, we are still squarely focused on the core, and building mechanics that appeal to the core. But also realising that is a path to actually reach up to the broader audience,” he explained.
Like any good Microsoft employee. Johnson took the time to punt the Kinect system during his presentation: “Kinect, we believe, introduces the ability to interact with content in a way people haven’t even imagined yet.”
“There are a lot of different things you’ll see that one might expect from Kinect, but some of the magic is going to come from the things that people don’t expect,” he vaguely asserted.
Personally, the thought that Microsoft was ‘turning their back on the core gamers’ never really occurred. Perhaps this is Microsoft’s awkward, nerdy way of telling the core gamers that they still love them, and their money.
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Source: Eurogamer.net
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