Microsoft: Too Early To Tell If Next Xbox Will Be First Out
The Xbox 360 will be selling for a long time, says Robbie Bach.
By Kat Bailey, 06/19/2008
The Xbox 360 is famous for pushing the envelope of the traditional hardware cycle, arriving on the market a year early in an effort to beat former market leader Sony to the next-generation punch. Now, with the Xbox 360 approaching its third year on the market, speculation has already turned to the next round of consoles. But while Microsoft Entertainment and Devices president Robbie Bach happily defends Microsoft's decision to get their system on the market first, they are in no hurry to shorten the hardware cycle for a second time.
In an interview with VentureBeat, Bach said that Microsoft's decision to put the Xbox 360 on the market as early as they did was the right decision, pointing to the advantages that it has given Microsoft over competitors Sony and Nintendo.
"If you take the question of whether it was the right thing to try to be first, the answer to that is definitely yes," Bach said. "It has given us a leg up in a number of places that are super important. It has given us a leg up with game developers. It has given us a leg up from an economics perspective. It helped us expand Xbox Live quickly. At a strategy level, if you asked if we wanted to be first again, I would say yes."<--the now-famous quote
When asked about the red ring of death problems that have plagued the Xbox 360 since it's release, he said that Microsoft was ready that the product was ready, but that the RROD was caused by "complex interaction with some very complex parts." But, Bach also admitted that he would change things if he could. "It's easy for me to go back and say, if I knew what would transpire over the next two years, would I go back and do something different, I think that's an obvious answer. But the fact is, based on the data we had at the time and all the hard work we put into it, there was no way to see what actually happened," he said.
But asked if he wanted the next Xbox to be the first on the market too, Bach said that it was still too early to tell. "Our view is we will be selling Xbox 360 for a long time. We are always working on new technologies. We have people working on those. People ask me how many people I have working on the next generation," Bach said. "On the one hand, it's everybody. On the other, it's nobody. People are continuously working on new technology."
While Microsoft has been planning for the next generation since the Xbox 360 hit the market, nothing is concrete until a shipping window is set some 18 months out, said Bach. In the meantime, Microsoft's number one goal remains profitability, with Bach calling it an "important milestone."
"There is no concrete market share or profit number. But certainly, having the economics and ecosystem be healthy are measurements of success. The video game business has now gotten big enough, so there will be multiple victors. It's not as much a winner take all market as it was ten years ago. That speaks to the growth of the market, the diversity of what gamers want, and the ability to differentiate ourselves."
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Just like I've said many times, just because they'd like to be first DOESN'T mean it will be out soon.
