So now that Kinect is optional and there’s a $399 price point, there are a lot of comparisons to PS4. What do you view as your main differentiator now if someone’s buying a standalone Xbox One system compared to PS4? The consoles are starting to seem pretty similar these days, especially in the wake of this announcement.
I think there are four main areas in terms of how ours system is differentiated. First is that the reason people buy these consoles is to play games. We’ve got the best games line-up. We had the best games line-up this past holiday if you talk to most experts in the games industry. As we go into E3, you’re going to see an incredible games line-up. Knock on wood, I believe we’re going to have a great games line-up for this coming holiday as well.
Second thing is people buy games to play with their friends. We have had the best multiplayer gaming system in this space for many years with Xbox Live Gold. We’ve really set the standard. You get better matchmaking capability with SmartMatch, you get better protection against people who cheat. Xbox Live Gold is the best place to come play with your friends.
Third is the original vision we had for Xbox One, which is an all-in-one entertainment device, and it still is, even with the $399 SKU. You still get Xbox One as an input one device where you can still watch live TV, do two things at once, input switch. A lot of the things you do with entertainment you just can’t even do on other systems. We’re really built for the future.
And finally you can still add on Kinect to create all these additional experiences with voice commands, biometric recognition, recording gameplay and more.
Those four things make it very differentiated, and now that the price points are the same, and people looking at games and entertainment experiences are future-proofing, I feel that we have a very differentiated system.
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What do you see as the future of Kinect here going forward? Do you think that it’s lived up to its potential or struggled in some ways?
The way I look at it is that you should take a five year vision. I think in five years, we will laugh at any computing device you can’t walk up to and talk to. Voice is going to be there for all devices. We’re a pioneer with Kinect in the living room. And it’s not just voice, and it’s voice and biometric ID. The ability to pioneer that, and with the success we’ve had so far with five million people, it’s remarkable. We feel great about it. And look, we’re going to learn a lot, and our partners are going to learn a lot, and our customers are going to learn a lot, and we’re going to continue to shape it. But I think we’re breaking a lot of new ground and we’re delighted with the progress.
Do you worry that now that the Kinect is optional, there may be less developer support for it as they make games going forward?
One thing I should say is that we made this decision in conjunction with our games publishers and our entertainment partners. As you can imagine, we have really strong relationships. The two of us looked at the problem the same way. We love Kinect, we love the way it’s going and the possibilities. At the same time, we also wanted to have a broadened base of users. Some games are fully Kinect-based, and some are better when you use Kinect, but can also work fine without it. In each of those cases, this is still the right call.
