![]() And as those games come around to the Xbox, there will be many social aspects to those as well. Also, all the traditional card and board games have huge communities on the web. Yeah, there's not much point playing pool against a computer. Do you have the opportunity to join a community if you want? Absolutely. The other focus is that many of the games, the arcade games, coming out have a multiplayer mode, so you'll have an opportunity to be social there as well. Not that I'll ever see my mom with a headset, but there are people for which that will happen. And the 360 opens up new opportunities for that. Our experience on the web side shows that there's a broad audience of people who do it from a social aspect and who socialize while playing games. But as you start to make friends, and as you start to have people in your friends group, you'll see their scores. You can play by yourself and log off and never interact with anybody else. The approach of the community is that it's relevant if you wish to go there. So I'm not competing against some kid in Burundi with five million points. What we did with the Xbox 360 is that you get a leader-board that's related to your friends, so you actually do get the opportunity to be number one. Do I care who the best Hexic player in the world is? Probably not, because they're way better than I will ever be. Let's say that I want to play Bejeweled or Hexic. While there are community-type games, what we're pushing is that there is some kind of community involvement if you want it, but there really doesn't have to be. With the online games, I often think of a more community-type thing. Usually I think of games like Bejeweled, where I pop up the game, I drag the jewels around for a bit, and then either the game ends or I get bored and I shut it down. How hard are you stressing community? When I think of casual gaming, I don't often think of community. But when you log out, it reverts to a demo version over on his machine. You can even take them to your friend's house, log in as yourself, and play it over there. For example, you see Geometry Wars, so you download it and you play it and at the end of 60 minutes you have the opportunity to buy it. ![]() You'll see a selection of games, and each of those games are available for download on a trial basis. There are two tiers of service, free and silver. You don't need to be a paid subscriber to use it. ![]() What you do is you select Xbox Live Arcade while you're connected up to the internet. That model was proven to us internally so now Xbox Live Arcade is built in to the Xbox 360 as part of the operating system. What it did for developers was to open up a distribution channel so you don't have to be making a $15-25 million dollar game to get on a console. That proved the model for us internally, but it also did great things for the developers. It resonated well with the people who got it, and the conversion rates were high. What we saw was that it was a very successful business model. So you had to get a CD (which was free) to get on Xbox Live Arcade. On the Xbox 1, we did Xbox Live Arcade, but that came out after the Xbox launched. But in each case you're talking about a slightly different content mix. And you can do that on the Xbox 360, and you can do that on the web, and you can do that on phones. It has to be quick and approachable and fun. Our belief is that we should make what we do fun, which is what casual gaming is all about. So keeping that demographic in mind is part of our commitment to our players. So what you'll see on Xbox Live Arcade, things like Geometry Wars, Joust, and things like that has somewhat of a different flavor than something you'd see on a web game. In that case, it's all about making sure that the content that we bring to that platform is appropriate for the demographic of the people that are playing it. The key for us, from a Microsoft Casual Games perspective, is that Xbox 360 is one of the platforms we work with. They're things that you'll play in a five to fifteen minute time-slice that could last for five hours depending on how you get engaged in it. They are bite-sized bits of entertainment that you'll play because they're fun and addictive and engaging. They're not the Halo 2's or the games that you'll walk out to EB and buy. Xbox Live Arcade is a distribution mechanism for smaller-size games. Can you tell us about Microsoft Casual Games and that perception? I don't think of playing a Tetris knockoff or Collapse or something akin to that. I think of going to Electronics Boutique or whatever game-shop and buying the most 3D testosterone-laden shooter and playing it on a 60-inch television. And when I think of the Xbox, I don't think of casual games. On October 27 at the Austin Game Conference, 's own John Hattan interviewed Microsoft Casual Games' own Chris Early and Shawn McMichael.įirst off, I see you've got the Xbox 360 out there.
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