Over the past four-and-a-half years, Microsoft’s Shane Kim has led the publisher’s first-party game efforts as general manager, making no small contribution to the Xbox 360’s success. Now he’s been promoted to the newly-created position of corporate VP of strategy and business development for Microsoft’s Interactive Entertainment Business.
"Our business is now in a very strong, stable position--we've turned the corner on profitability, we've got 19 million consoles out there and 12 million members online and we felt really good about our holiday lineup. But we wanted to place more executive focus on the mid- to long-term," he said in a phone interview.
Stepping into Kim’s shoes is Phil Spencer, who headed up MGS in Europe out of his London base, leading the company’s ongoing efforts to establish a European leadership team. He’ll be moving back to the U.S. later this summer.
Spencer and his crew will have to execute in the face of stiff competition. As momentum for the rival PlayStation 3 builds, 2008 is yet another year that the Xbox 360 must be ready for Sony exclusives such as LittleBigPlanet, Gran Turismo 5, Resistance 2 and the recently-released Metal Gear Solid 4. (Not to mention the Wii, whose successful strategy has shot off in a decidedly different direction.)
Unsurprisingly, Spencer is backing Microsoft in the software battle this year, particularly during the ever-important holidays.
“I feel very good about our lineup,” he says. “I think if you look at the inception of the 360 and our contributions at Microsoft Game Studios, this holiday looks to be in my mind another great holiday for us.
“…The lineup that we have both this holiday, and looking into the early concepts and prototypes to come, I think it lines up against any competitive lineup that I see out there.”
Kim is more straightforward, perhaps more daring in his predictions for 2008, when taking the strength of Microsoft’s late 2007 lineup into consideration.
“I think the platform is just as strong, if not stronger [than last year]. That’s hard to say, because we had incredible titles last year with BioShock, Halo 3, Mass Effect and Call of Duty 4. … Especially when you look at Halo 3, which was a phenomenal industry event, it’s easy to look back and go ‘you can’t possibly be as strong.’
“But if you look at the initial success of Grand Theft Auto IV on Xbox 360, that’s been super, and we have exclusive [DLC] content coming too. Gears of War 2 is going to be huge, Fable 2 is going to be huge.
“So I don’t know. I believe that we’re going to have just as big of a year in terms of content on Xbox 360. Maybe we don’t have a particular exclusive that’s as big as Halo 3, but I do think that Gears 2 and Fable 2 will be really big hits.”
Asked how the chances were of MGS ever creating a franchise as big as (or bigger than) Halo, Kim exclaimed, “Really good. And I’ll tell you why. We’ve got the talent, we’ve got people who are always on the lookout for new ideas and talent, and most importantly we have the commitment and the will to create those hits. Those are not easy tasks. There would’ve been lots of people in the past that would’ve not stuck with various projects that have turned out to be very successful for us.
“In no way would I say that Halo, or what we know of Halo today, is the peak of what’s possible. Far from it. It’s another benchmark, another milestone to exceed in the future.”