GameTavern - Wii60 destroyed?

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6157966...s&subj=6157966

Quote:

CN: When you look at the ideal Xbox consumer, who is that person?

PM: He is a male. He is connected. He is very, very used to going online for community. He's probably played PC games online. He's part of a Halo 2 clan and has been for two years. That comes from him playing Halo in college--so he's 23 or 24--with his buddies. He still loves to go out on a Wednesday night with them, even though they're spread all around the US. But they all come together Wednesday night to relive the days in the dorm room.

CN: What else does he want?

PM: He also expects instant gratification, the delivery of game demos to his hard drive via his broadband network. And he's popular enough to have his profile online and he's pretty competitive, so he loves (Xbox game) achievements. He'll stay up all night to get achievements in games that his buddies have because it just pisses him off that they've got them first. He also would rather starve to death than not have a high-definition TV. He'll go without food rather than have a standard-def 27-inch TV.

CN: It's looking like the Wii won't be direct competition for the Xbox or PlayStation 3. Do you agree?

PM: In a lot of instances, it will be a No. 2 box because it's priced accordingly. The fear I would have is that people will buy the box and only play a few games. I think you'll pull it out at parties. It's fun for a few minutes, but I'm not sure (how long that will last).

CN: When Sony announced the PS3 will cost $600, were you guys pumping your fists?

PM: It will still sell out at launch. I've never known a console that didn't blow the doors down in the early going, and PS3 and the Wii will be no exception. But this is not about the first six months. These are six- to eight-year cycles now. So the question is how you attract that next 20 million consumers when you need $199 as a price point, for example, to do that. But maybe your cost of goods programming has not reduced in line to where you need. We've lived through that.

So as a result, you may have to take an enormous financial hit to catch up to your competitors' pricing. Sony is very fond of saying, "We never come into the market first, but we always win," or "The next generation will start when we say it starts." But they have none of the same advantages in this generation, like superior graphics, being the only console to play DVDs, or exclusive software. Now, these are two boxes on a par. And many would say the advantage goes to Microsoft because we're in the second generation of game development (while PS3 developers are still on the first generation).

CN: What percentage of your market has high-definition sets?

PM: Ninety percent of our first million customers in the U.S. either had one or said they were going to buy one within six months. The deeper you get in, the more that drops off, because price becomes a factor. And so I think we're doing a good job in tipping over that 25-year-old male into buying these things. They're actually more likely to buy them for video games because there's not much high-definition content available on TV.

CN: What have you learned about launching consoles?

PM: There's never enough supply. What we set out to do was do the first global launch. And it's Murphy's Law. A product that has 1,700 parts in it, it's no good if 1,699 parts show up. You can't manufacture it. But I will go to my grave proud of the fact that we managed to break the paradigm that it needs 12 months to launch a console. We did it in 17 days, from when we started here and then moved to Japan.

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