GamingBolt spoke to Anshu Mor, director of interactive entertainment business at Microsoft India, about the console’s success in India and the efforts being made to appeal to gamers along with the impact that new features like Windows 10 and backwards compatibility will have.

Note: This interview was conducted before Microsoft announced that it will be bringing the Xbox One to non-Amazon platforms.

"With Windows 10 coming in you know, just the whole concept of applications across all devices that are one big push that will encourage more local content coming up. "

So let us get the big question out of the way. It’s over a year since the Xbox One launched back in September 2014. How did it fared when one compares it to the Xbox 360’s launcg?

Anshu Mor: We actually don’t share numbers on the platform from console’s perspective so I won’t be able to give you any absolute number regarding this. But as you know this launch was exclusive with Amazon and this was a huge bet for us, a dramatic shift in terms of our distribution strategy and I am happy to report that we’ve had actually one of the best years for the Xbox.

Okay. Related to Amazon, do you think it was a safe strategy to go completely digital with Xbox One?

Anshu Mor: Absolutely. I was the one who took the call. There were a lot of reasons behind that. If you look at the Indian market and you would know just as much as I would because you’re deep into gaming, what this country needs is the awareness of the product to be out there with people who are not gamers right now. The hardcore gaming community is not as big as it is in most of the Western worlds or even Southeast Asian markets.

It is actually first time gamers and people who are around the tech gadget categories who then are the ones who take a call into coming for a console gaming part of it and we felt that with an online player it was the right mix because the audience that we target are the ones who were actually going and searching for these products online, evaluating it online and eventually buying it online. They were not the guys who would technically land up in an offline retail store and necessarily play a demo and then get influenced. From a consumer segmentation perspective it was the right move. We also felt that just from a build reach perspective, Amazon provided us more reach than what we were getting earlier in an offline model. Amazon also had been creating a lot of customers’ value, better including offers with bundles etc so we felt it was the right thing to do for our customers to give them a single stop shop where they could get all the information, all the products, all the categories.

The Xbox One has a lower selling price compared to the PS4 in India. Ever since you guys had that price drop what kind of response this has generated?

Anshu Mor: Tremendous and I’m so glad to hear it for the first time right, that our prices are lower than PlayStation! We’ve seen the market respond to prices clearly and you know essentially this is also a factor of what consumers see as prices in let’s say US or Dubai market and then they start comparing it to the India pricing. Now India pricing is obviously affected by the rupee structure that we have and you know just the market realities of margins etc but Amazon since we were able to play around with a few price points, every time we did that we saw a tremendous increase. You know the spikes happened in terms of sales obviously. I think the insight behind that really is a lot of people who consider purchasing the product outside India for pricing reasons, started evaluating buying it in India because they were also getting the warranty and the warranty was only applicable if they buy from Amazon in India. So they were valuing the warranty and they were putting a particular price to it that also led to a spike in sales for us.

"Xbox for example is just not built to play hardcore gaming. It is gaming, it is Skype, it is TV, you know it is entertainment, there are a bunch of things that you can do with an Xbox where every person in the family young or old will benefit from the experience but I don’t think everybody knows it. "

What is your biggest concern regarding the Indian market regarding promoting Xbox products?

Anshu Mor: I think first is the cultural misconception that gaming is bad for people. Culturally there is still a lot of…gaming is not a… you know console gaming specifically is not really considered mainstream in the country and it is largely not because of the category, it is just people do not have the information in terms of what all can happen. For example  we have games like Minecraft and these are hardcore educational games if I may call it right and it’s been proven around the world, schools are adopting it and they really help the child. So I think people don’t know the category as such. It is not about a brand. It is not about us or PlayStation.

They just do not know the category, they feel it’s complicated, they feel it’s a different world and it is very difficult to get into so while they will play games on the smaller screen devices but you know just getting into the category and understanding it is I believe one of the fundamental things that we have to solve and which is a function of making sure that there is large scale awareness of what the product can do.

Xbox for example is just not built to play hardcore gaming. It is gaming, it is Skype, it is TV, you know it is entertainment, there are a bunch of things that you can do with an Xbox where every person in the family young or old will benefit from the experience but I don’t think everybody knows it. So we need to fix the awareness thing. Second in my view would be you know just consistently from an industries standpoint we need to work towards ensuring that people understand and relate to the pricing of the products.

We have made whatever efforts we are making, we will continue to make them but a lot of people since they don’t know then you have to marry these two together, they don’t know the category and then they see these prices and they say it’s too costly and I don’t know what it can do for me. It’s unlike a mobile. Mobiles are costlier than this but they buy it because they know exactly what it can do for them. So you know it’s a bunch of these things that we would need to solve in India specifically because the whole game is really to create the market. It is not that there is an existing market sitting where we will take share away from somebody.

Are you guys taking any steps to resolve this kind of mentality?

Anshu Mor: A bunch of things. This whole deal in itself introduced us as a category towards large scale audience which were technical…which not necessarily was walking into an offline gaming store or an offline section of a gaming store inside a bigger store right so it gave us the opportunity to present the content in a very clear manner. It gave us the opportunity to present what the entire console can do in a very simplified manner. Because you know when you’re in a shop and think of yourself walking into any gaming store, you would not get the full understanding of the category unless it is explained to you and those experiences were very difficult to manage across the country so sometimes you would have great people explaining the product and the value would go through, sometimes the guy would not be able to explain. In this case since in our mind we had created one destination, it allowed us to play with the messaging of the category and the portfolio and I believe this has kind of obviously impacted the way we have performed in the last one year.

What is Xbox in India doing to get more local content up and running on the console?

Anshu Mor: That’s a constant endeavour and we are working towards that. Now with Windows 10 coming in you know, just the whole concept of applications across all devices that are one big push that will encourage more local content coming up. We’re also very carefully evaluating what is the kind of content a typical console owner would like to see. So we’ve worked a lot in the past one year towards defining that and working with a few partners so you will start seeing that happen soon and Windows 10 would obviously help a long way for us to expedite that entire process.

So is it fair to assume it is not happening any time soon?

Anshu Mor: Oh! You can safely assume it’s going to happen soon, we will just have to wait for announcing those dates and those partners but it will happen sooner than later.

"I think you know – I can safely tell you – Xbox fans can always look forward to more exclusives, more new IPs and you know bigger and bigger games. There is no doubt about it."

You just mentioned about the costing of Xbox One and the software. I’m just wondering whether Microsoft India has any plans to open up local manufacturing plant?

Anshu Mor: It actually doesn’t bring down the cost substantially. We understand what happens  because we have evaluated those models and you know it doesn’t make business sense and it is not a huge impact on consumer pricing. So that’s not going to happen from our perspective, we’re not looking at it right now.

From the blunders of 2013 to  your current focus on games, what made Microsoft realize that for gamers, it’s always about games first?

Anshu Mor: The simplest answer to that is consumers. If you’ve seen what we’ve been doing with Xbox One, ever since the launch, you see the amount of features and functionalities that have been added in every update. The console is very different from what it was when it was launched and all of that is happening because consumers are giving us a certain feedback and what they want to see and we are implementing that.

You would have seen the same thing in Windows 10, with this whole Windows Insider Program I think it’s a mentality that the organization thinks and believes in deeply, that listen to the consumers and if you know wherever we can you know tweak the product and the functionality to offer what the consumers want.

The biggest example that I can quote right now is this whole backwards compatibility bit. One of the top most wanted features ever since the generation 8 consoles were launched and we finally were able to deliver it and it is a huge technical piece to deliver something like that but we were able to because of listening to the consumers and I think that’s essentially what the strategy has been always. So you know the portfolio games that we’re now talking about, all the features and functionality of the box, all stuff which is going to come in the future with other categories and products integrated, it is all what we’re hearing from the consumers.

Xbox One has this amazing line up of games piled up for the rest of the year. Do you think this is enough to push the Xbox One in the competition against PS4?

Anshu Mor: Obviously. In this industry every year when games are launched everybody says this is a great line up of games, but I personally know the category in the industry very well. This is really the greatest line up that could possibly happen,” Anshu explained to GamingBolt. “All the big franchises that we have are launching this year and it’s phenomenal from that perspective, right? To get a Gears of War, a Halo, a Forza and a Tomb Raider all in half a year, it’s not even a year, is just absolutely fantastic.

There are three components involved in this and explains why we are superbly bullish about this right now. One is the greatest line up of games and it’s all about every genres coming together in a single year. It can’t get better for a console gamer on Xbox this year.

The second is bringing these Xbox 360 games back to the Xbox One platform with the backwards compatibility feature. It’s such a delight to consumers that all the investments they have made in the previous platform will be utilized and they will be able to play those games. So the portfolio increases and then am sure you must have heard about Windows 10’s games integration with Xbox One. There are a lot of cool features like streaming a game from your Xbox One to Windows 10 but that aside just think about what we are going to do with the community that will bring together PC and Xbox One players. Really, it can’t get any better than this, I don’t know whether there is anything else that would make it better.

Can Xbox One fans look forward to new IPs in 2016?

Anshu Mor: Yes, absolutely. I think you know – I can safely tell you – Xbox fans can always look forward to more exclusives, more new IPs and you know bigger and bigger games. There is no doubt about it.

So I guess you guys are deeply invested in new IPs.

Anshu Mor: Deeply invested, yes.

"There is a firm believe actually that a lot of people would migrate from the Xbox 360 platform to the Xbox One platform."

So you mentioned about backwards compatibility earlier. Do you think it can potentially bring your old fan base to the Xbox One?

Anshu Mor: There is a firm believe actually that a lot of people would migrate from the Xbox 360 platform to the Xbox One platform. While this was obviously a global call the whole technology behind putting Xbox 360 games on the Xbox One was just not one country or subsidiary asking…it was literally the whole world asking.

But to give you a little insight, throughout last year when we were talking to consumers especially the Xbox 360 fan base, all of them were telling us one concern that we have an investment in games on the Xbox 360 platform and we don’t want to give up that investment. I think we have solved that and those investments that they were talking about the games so we have kind of solved that. With that investment sorted, we do believe that a lot of them will shift this year.

What is your take on Windows 10 and its integration with Xbox One?

Anshu Mor: See…you know my biggest excitement with Windows 10 is how we bring the gaming community together. You’ve been in the industry, you know exactly that the whole concept of this whole gaming industry is really about the community, right? You want people to play with, you want people to compete with it and I think just getting two worlds which was so far connected, a PC gamer would think very differently about a console game or a console gamer would think very differently about a PC gamer and now just bringing those two worlds together, it would be a huge boost in terms of just getting these guys to play against each other.

So when that online community kind of explodes like the way we expect it to explode now, it just helps the industry as such. And then games being available on both platforms would obviously benefit, it just gives more choice to the consumer. The fact that even simple features like streaming a game from your console to the PC benefits players in the house at the time when you really want to play. So it is undoubtedly a huge boost for gaming especially in the Indian context where we have a very heavy mix of PC gamers in the country.

Do you think we will ever see a Forza 6 or a Halo 5 on the PC in the future, given your new found commitment for PC gaming?

Anshu Mor: Specifically on those there is nothing to announce but you know I can safely tell you there’s a bunch of games which are coming which would be available on both the platforms and as we go forward, we’ll keep announcing those games and you will see a very massive portfolio being packed with this functionality.

Crackdown 3 marks a new dawn for Xbox One games. Cloud based gaming promises to bring in better visuals and what not. Do you think the cloud service will have stability issues here?

Anshu Mor: It remains to be seen in all transparency. There are people who have decent bandwidth connections so I would imagine a 2 Mbps plus connection would still continue to work. You know, these things are connected to the ISP so I cannot comment on that. I don’t believe that the experiences will be compromised in the current set of consumers we have.

But the “power of the cloud” is still an important asset for Microsoft, right?

Anshu Mor: I think the cloud will play a phenomenal role as we go forward. We as a company believe in the power of the cloud,” Anshu said to GamingBolt. “Even if you look back, we have always maintained that there is this power that the box brings in which is huge value to the consumer and then there is the power of the cloud that will match or exceed the expectations that can be delivered on the box. Crackdown 3 is one of the early experiences of that which we are going to give you.

"I believe that entertainment portfolio is extremely important. When they see a single device which can do everything, now think of it this way – when somebody buys an Xbox they will not say ‘hey I do not play games on it.’ So they will play games, they just need to understand what kind of games that are available for them."

Is the entertainment portfolio still an important factor for Microsoft?

Anshu Mor: I believe that entertainment portfolio is extremely important. When they see a single device which can do everything, now think of it this way – when somebody buys an Xbox they will not say ‘hey I do not play games on it.’ So they will play games, they just need to understand what kind of games that are available for them.

Then they look at the TV integration part of it which is such a huge benefit because they’re in a household and all the people who are using Xbox One right now, just to switch between playing a game and just switching to TV is so, so simple and that’s a very cool feature and that too with voice commands. And then the entertainment content because we do believe that this audience segment which is very big on entertainment, right? They’re the ones who like their movies and their DVD, CDs and then music etc so it is undoubtedly extremely important.

What is your take on the Xbox One updates that are being pushed on a monthly basis?

Anshu Mor: They are phenomenally important. Although these are called updates, these are actually features and functionalities that get added every month that makes the box so much more exciting. The Xbox One of today is so much different than the one which was launched and we will continue to make those innovations. It’s all coming from consumer feedback. They want something on the box and we will make every effort to deliver it and those will be delivered through these updates.

At a personal level, I always get excited when there is an update coming. If you are a tech freak you will love updates that adds features, right?

What kind of impact do you think the upcoming launch of Halo 5 will have on Xbox One?

Anshu Mor: Yeah, you know , the Halo franchise is a cult franchise for us, there’s no doubt about it, so a lot of the people are, you know, Halo fans… and all the big games that I could think of are launching. It’s like, you know, I don’t know, when we will get time to play them entirely? But again, this is very huge, Halo is very big, Forza is very big, then obviously, FIFA and all, which are third party games, are very big, right? So it’s like a gaming festival which is going to happen in the next two or three months right now. The success of Halo always is big for the category and I think it’s big for the industry as well. It’s one of the games which defines a generation, really.

"On Xbox One monthly updates: But we keep asking [ourselves] whether we have done a good job of explaining at least the key ones to the audiences. We try to do that, hoping that we are at least doing a decent job but that is one area we will continue to focus on and ensuring people understand what they are getting in every update."

How do you feel about the timed exclusivity deal for Tomb Raider?

Anshu Mor: All these timed exclusivity or complete exclusivity deals are important for a platform. It just shows the value of the platform to the consumers very well. We have gone on record by stating that while exclusives and timed exclusives is one part of it, we are also deeply invested in ensuring that there is new IP which comes in, we are deeply invested in ensuring that we have right connect to the gaming portfolio, not just console gaming.

But all of them will help. There is no doubt about it that anybody who is a  fan of Tomb Raider…when they see that game launching and having that timed exclusivity, they will have a favorable outlook towards the Xbox One.

Can you give me an example of something that Microsoft has done for the better but it hasn’t received that much of an attention?

Anshu Mor: In terms of features and functionalities?

Yes.

Anshu Mor: That’s an interesting question, let me see. You know actually we’ve been a strange market, India market okay. When we launched Xbox One last year, we were expecting a very balanced mix of the Kinect portfolio, as in you know Xbox One with Kinect and a very balanced you know an equally balanced mix of standalone. In our first few months of the launch we were pleasantly surprised I must say with the number of people who are buying the Kinect bundle and you know this was upwards of almost 70-75% of the people who bought Xbox within the first three or four months. This was massively good news for us because they were able to then obviously get more features and functionality at that time and it so happened that during the course of all these updates that we spoke about a lot of features and functionality landed on the stand alone box and you could do a bunch of things with the controller.

For example just bringing up the snap and changing applications made it much more comfortable to use those features and we’ve seen again markets respond to that very nicely. I don’t think that from a feature standpoint there has been a disappointment as such but I will like to look more inwardly and ask ourselves whether we have publicized every feature that we have launched. So many of them have come up…so I am not sure whether all consumers understand the portfolio as much. We continue to strive to make sure that they understand it but there has been no particular piece that has been disappointing.

But we keep asking [ourselves] whether we have done a good job of explaining at least the key ones to the audiences. We try to do that, hoping that we are at least doing a decent job but that is one area we will continue to focus on and ensuring people understand what they are getting in every update.

" If you’ve seen what we’ve showcased at E3 and at other forums it’s the whole integration of HoloLens with Minecraft, so clearly there’s a road map to do this but we are obviously not disclosing any particular game where those experiences would land."

Is Kinect still important for Microsoft and Xbox One?

Anshu Mor: Yeah I think, it is phenomenally important to have Kinect in the Xbox One portfolio and you know now things are moving in the same direction of how you interact with devices. I think that’s how you should look at Kinect. It’s not a standalone feature or a game but it’s how you interact with the device and you know whether it’s Kinect or whether it’s HoloLens or whether it’s VR, all these are different ways that we are working on as a company to make sure that your interaction with the devices that you prefer is exciting for you. And Kinect plays a very important role in that.

Just with Kinect coming in, it is so easy for everybody in the family to interact with the device just to switch it on with voice, just to change you know what you want to watch. It just makes it easier more comfortable to interact. It adds more of an expedience when it is inside a game. You know Skype…if you’ve used Skype on Xbox One you would know what that experience is…it’s just mind boggling to have that level of clarity and that level of video experience on a chat so you know they obviously are part of the larger plan that we have to enable different experiences with our devices.

Talking a bit about graphics API, what is your take on DX12 on Xbox One?

Anshu Mor: The whole API bit is just an enhancement from a gaming experience perspective. It’s a differentiation, it’s an enhancement from a gaming perspective. The kind of stuff that I have read about internally in terms of the value it brings to the whole gaming experience, I would see that as the end consumer impact. Not many consumers would understand what the APIs were or what DX is or you know stuff like that but I think to them it is just a very highly enhanced consumer experience in terms of gameplay that would come through.

What is happening with Gears of War 4?

Anshu Mor: Right now nothing. I know as much as you do, so right now nothing but I think as time goes by we will have more information on that right.

[laughs] It is still a huge game for Xbox One in 2016.

Anshu Mor: It is, it is huge.

HoloLens seems to be an amazing tech. Any plans of integration with Xbox One?

Anshu Mor: If you’ve seen what we’ve showcased at E3 and at other forums it’s the whole integration of HoloLens with Minecraft, so clearly there’s a road map to do this but we are obviously not disclosing any particular game where those experiences would land. We’ve shown the capability right now but there’s really nothing else to say. This is an experience that we can consistently land.

"With smartphones coming in that changed and when people want better experiences or deeper experiences you know that’s when they start evaluating stuff like console gaming"

I guess that about wraps it up. Any closing words?

Anshu Mor: We’re changing in a positive direction because we have obviously seen year over year of growth, we have consistently seen it and the percentage growth have increased. Last year was phenomenally high growth we saw for our portfolio at least. I think we’re moving in the right direction, consumers are getting more and more exposed to games because of smaller scale devices. They get exposed to gaming when they do that on their smart phones and they do that on their tablets or PCs and then they want better and better experiences so you know comparing to a world about five years ago or seven years ago, gaming was pretty much alien to most people.

With smartphones coming in that changed and when people want better experiences or deeper experiences you know that’s when they start evaluating stuff like console gaming etc. So I think we’re moving in the right direction. A lot of work needs to be done. Like I said it is market creation. We need to get people to be aware of the category, the portfolio and the games and what the box can do for them and their families but we’re pretty optimistic about the future of gaming here.

So mobile gaming is not a threat to console gaming.

Anshu Mor: No, no. I see that as a huge bonus for us here. I mean gaming per se on a smaller device is a huge bonus right, it just helps the industry automatically.

Microsoft’s current strategy with the Kinect is the complete opposite of what we witnessed during the Xbox 360 days. When the console was first introduced back in 2013, Kinect was quoted as an essential experience by Microsoft, compulsorily bundling it with the console. The plan backfired and Microsoft had to eventually provide a standalone bundle.

It seems though Kinect has a lowered importance in the eyes of Microsoft these days. However, Xbox India boss Anshu Mor believes that Kinect is still important as far as user experiences are concerned.

“Yeah I think, it is phenomenally important to have Kinect in the Xbox One portfolio and you know now things are moving in the same direction of how you interact with devices. I think that’s how you should look at Kinect. It’s not a standalone feature or a game but it’s how you interact with the device and you know whether it’s Kinect or whether it’s HoloLens or whether it’s VR, all these are different ways that we are working on as a company to make sure that your interaction with the devices that you prefer is exciting for you. And Kinect plays a very important role in that.”

“Just with Kinect coming in, it is so easy for everybody in the family to interact with the device just to switch it on with voice, just to change you know what you want to watch. It just makes it easier more comfortable to interact. It adds more of an expedience when it is inside a game. You know Skype…if you’ve used Skype on Xbox One you would know what that experience is…it’s just mind boggling to have that level of clarity and that level of video experience on a chat so you know they obviously are part of the larger plan that we have to enable different experiences with our devices.”

Mor also shared his thoughts on DirectX 12 and how it can possibly help with an enhanced games experience.

“The whole API bit is just an enhancement from a gaming experience perspective. It’s a differentiation, it’s an enhancement from a gaming perspective. The kind of stuff that I have read about internally in terms of the value it brings to the whole gaming experience, I would see that as the end consumer impact. Not many consumers would understand what the APIs were or what DX is or you know stuff like that but I think to them it is just a very highly enhanced consumer experience in terms of gameplay that would come through.”

This brings to the end of our month long coverage on Xbox One coverage with Xbox One India boss Anshu Mor. However there is one last thing! You can read our full interview with Mor in the coming days. The interview will have new details and information that have not been published yet so stay tuned.

Ravi Sinha: Tell us about the scenario of the competition between Xbox and PlayStation in the future.

Anshu Mor: When we look at our platform and we look at others who are playing in the same space, there are multiple levels in which we are competing against them. One is around how motion sensing is as a technology, more so from here, and the reason that is important is because that attracts family audiences, new audiences which are coming onto a console and gaming. The second area we see is online services, how the entire platform plays, specific to the gaming world, and the third area we see is what else can the console do in terms of more services that could be offered, which is really the entertainment space, so that the console is not just a gaming console, but an entertainment console as well. Fourth, would be the IP we build our system around.

When we look at the competition…when we look at Sony, we’ve seen them make a lot of moves in each category but from our perspective, I think we give a far more wholesome experience. So when we say motion sensing, for example, it’s truly about full body motion. It’s not about holding another piece of hardware in your hand. When we talk about Xbox Live as an experience, it’s a mix of both hardcore gaming services, entertainment services, and now with the launch of Windows 8, integration between different devices. So I think in terms of innovation, we are far more advanced in terms of what we are offering to the consumer with just one single box and the services associated with it,

RS: Could you tell us about the integration of Xbox Live within Windows 8?

AM: Windows 8 as a platform would carry three services from the Xbox portfolio, which would make them land across multiple devices or different screen sizes including phones, PCs, tablets, etc. The first is Xbox games services, in which you would look at games coming from the Xbox Live Marketplace, which could be created for those smaller screens. They would get associated with your gamer ID, which is a secondary area of integration – the entire identity of the gamer – and that’s something you carry along. So your friends on Xbox Live, messages, notifications, which friend at what point has started playing a particular game – all of that lands on your smaller screen when it happens. The other level of integration that we bring to games per say is that we bring part of the gaming experience onto these small devices.

Anshu Mor

Today the reality is that when you watch a TV screen, you are not just looking at the TV screen. You always hold a second screen in your hand and multi-tasking. Now with gaming, what happens is…while you’re immersed in a game, like say, Halo 4, there’s a lot of gaming information that can help you play the game better, or can help you compete better if you’re online. So the game information lands on your smaller devices via SmartGlass, which is a direct connection between the device and the Xbox console. The third scenario in terms of integration is around music and videos. Whichever country we have the Xbox music and videos launched, that same service is available across all the screens that carry Windows 8. So if you see the music app in Windows 8, it is the Xbox music app, the videos app is the Xbox videos app.

So the music service, the videos service and the gaming service, all three are integrated and all of them have interplay between devices using SmartGlass as an application. So I could be playing a video through the Xbox Live video services on my console, and if I decide to leave the house, I can just transfer the movie from my TV to my Smartphone or to my tablet using Windows 8. And it’s not just Windows 8, by the way, the integration of SmartGlass would also be available on iOS and Android so we make sure that more and more customers get to have that experience with their Xbox.

RS: Can you tell us a little bit about Xbox-exclusive titles coming to Windows 8 tablets or hybrid PCs? Will we be seeing Halo 4 or any other titles releasing on Windows 8 tablets/hybrid PCs?

We have no announcements to make on Halo 4 coming on the PC screen. Just as a general trend, given that the service is integrated at the back-end, which is that you get Xbox Live on all screens now, it is just a logical movement from hereon that there would be games available which would play across all 3 screens…

RS: Even though there are no concrete plans right now?

AM: Yeah. Even though there are no concrete plans. We don’t have a game in particular to announce which would…especially a blockbuster game, which would get ported on to smaller screens but it is a logical next step.

RS: So there are no announcements to “make” (laughs), but potentially there could be something that we don’t know about.

AM: (Laughs) There isn’t any announcement. We haven’t heard of or any plans as such of any of the Xbox 360 blockbuster titles which are getting ported on to it. As soon as we have, we’ll be the first persons to talk about it because I think it’s a brilliant thing to have.

RS: Could you tell us a little about the Indian sales for Xbox 360 and how it compares to previous years?

AM: While we don’t share official numbers at a subsidiary level – at an Indian level – in the past two years, the general gaming industry, the console gaming industry, has been growing at about 30-35%. For us, the option of Xbox console as such has grown by 70% so we’re going at about double the rate of what the market is going at. And one of the biggest reasons for that is that we’ve essentially opened up an audience that never used to exist earlier, especially in India, which is the family audience. That happened when we came out with Kinect. It’s a very important thing to understand because in India for lack of knowledge for what a console could do, there was always this apprehension of bringing a console home, and parents would feel that a console would go against the key priorities of studying…it was considered addictive in that sense.

With Kinect, all that changed because suddenly, the console is considered very healthy. Playing a game on Kinect is as good as going down to the park and playing for a few hours…Normally if you play on Kinect, you’ll realize within 20 minutes that you’re sweating, and it offers a chance for the family to learn different things. Dance Central, for instance, might just be a game for some people but others look at it as a way to learn how to dance. Parents put their kids in dance classes, and right now they could just do this home. And not only the kid, but it would be the whole  family learning. That’s a large chunk of the 70% growth rate that we’ve seen, while the core gaming community has grown at its decent rate.

RS: As you know about rumours surrounding the next Xbox, what is Microsoft’s status on the next console to come out bearing the Xbox name?

AM: At a fundamental level, we’re committed to innovation. It’s about bringing new experiences, new scenarios to the end consumer. When you look at Xbox 360, the current generation of console, we are in the 7th year or so of the console. In the industry, normally after 5 years of a console, you start seeing a decline in the overall volumes that you’re doing on a per year basis. In our case, our 5th year has been better than 4th, 6th year has been better than 5th, 7th year has been better than 6th, and last year, we became the number 1 console in the world. The reason why that has happened is not because there was a promise of an upgrade that would happen with the console. The reason why it became number 1 is all the innovation that we’ve done – and there’s been plenty of it – has happened around the box.

So while the Xbox 360 has remained the same, we’ve innovated with Kinect’s motion sensing and voice recognition, we’ve innovated with the entire entertainment and music space with Xbox Live, we’ve innovated with devices integration using SmartGlass. So the experiences, even with the current generation of Xbox, ahs been improving year after year and it continues to do that. SmartGlass was just a week ago, and it takes the experience to a new level. We don’t have any formal information to share, again, if and when the next version of Xbox happens but we do believe that there’s a lot of innovation besides the box, which will continue to happen through Live and Kinect.

RS: When did this transformation happen, that the Xbox which was first known as “the most powerful console” at the time, trying to capture the core gaming market, shifted to what Kinect currently offers?

AM: If you consider the larger trend of what is happening, we want to be the guys who own your living room. We want to be the center of your entertainment and gaming experience. And if you look at the broader vision of Xbox, it’s not just a gaming device, it’s an entertainment device. The reason why we look at it like that is because multiple players in the market are trying to do multiple things to be the center of your TV experience. Some are coming in through the video route, some through the music route, and some through the streaming route via whatever television operator you may have. We realize that as a box connected to the TV, there’s an opportunity for us not only to enhance the way people interact with that box, essentially thanks to Kinect which took away the controller and brought in voice and gesture movements.

We also realized there was an opportunity for us to make that box also an entertainment box. That single box then giving you the entire experiences around Video on Demand, Live TV or music, and that’s how the transformation over the years happened. We see this trend continuing, we see the single box connected to an IP network being the center of all your gaming and entertainment needs. And then if you want to carry the experience across multiple devices, we obviously have applications like SmartGlass that will continue to evolve as we go forward.

RS: Are we going to see Microsoft continue down this path of more refinement of current technologies or will there be something new and revolutionary to come out of the stables soon?

AM: Very difficult question to answer. In the sense that, it’s very difficult to classify innovation as revolutionary or not, or just a refinement. For us, Kinect is revolutionary because it’s brought in a new audience and a new way to interact with the device. The way Kinect has gone away from Xbox and also into other applications…it’s just kind of developed a world of its own. Bringing entertainment or entertainment services on to Live was possibly a refinement to a certain level. It’s a mix and match. Our attempt is fairly simple: we understand that you as a consumer, at least from Xbox standpoint, would look at us and say, “Hey, I want my gaming needs. I want my music needs, I want my video needs and maybe also my app needs, or social media needs to be fulfilled through you guys”.

So I need to find a way in which (a) your experience is simple enough, especially in countries like India. It is simple enough to get into the experience and then it is engaging enough for you to sustain that experience. Some of what comes in the future could be revolutionary but some of it could just be refinement of what we do today. When you look at SmartGlass, it’s very difficult to say whether it’s a refinement or revolutionary. Devices talking to each other – was that revolutionary? No, it is not. A lot of devices talk to each other. Can you throw content from one device to the other? Maybe you can, even in today’s scenario. But what SmartGlass did was it just made the experience so much simpler, and it brought it in a larger portfolio of things we could do within that app.

It was no longer about saying “Hey, I’m going to play a movie here and then I could throw it on the same Wi-Fi network to my TV”, which is possible today through multiple devices. But if I said, hey, if you’re watching a movie, what if I give you information about that movie on your Smartphone? What if you want to know the location of where a particular shot has been filmed? What if you want to know about the clothes that the characters are wearing? So stuff like that. We’re just making the experience far better in some cases with just refinement of what we offered and in some cases it’s purely revolutionary like Kinect was.

RS: Concerning indie game development for Xbox Live, we talk about Introversion, and it’s co-founder stating that it’s more difficult to develop for Xbox Live and for PSN – essentially, console digital media platforms – as compared to PC, because you have higher development costs versus lesser returns.

And then the development kit, which is available for $10,000 USD, and is non-refundable. What are your thoughts on this?

Console gaming over the past few years is at a stage where you need to define an experience which is radically different from what you see on PCs. I think that’s the reality of gaming. There’s a lot of debate in the market, like “Hey, will consoles be dead, will gaming land on smaller tablets and phones, etc” but the reality is that when you develop a console game, you’re developing something completely different. Now, to develop a game which different, there are multiple factors that come into play like graphics, gameplay, storyline but most importantly, the quality of the experience that you give to the consumer.

Even with indie games, or for that matter, I would probably generalize it across all games, the reality is: If you need to create an experience which is fundamentally different from what you would get on PC and smaller screens, there is a cost of development that you would need to bear. That is just to insure the kind of quality that consumers expect from console games. We’ve also seen multiple examples of lesser quality games being developed in the name of localization but those games have never worked. Even if the IP has worked with a particular audience, those games have not worked because people don’t accept that a low quality game would be available on the console. There is cost which is associated with it.

My personal belief is that that cost could continue to rise but at the same time, if the IP you are building has attracted the attention of gamers, the returns would also be higher. Yes, the risks are higher today on console gaming but if you develop the right IP – you have instances like the Halo franchise, which is more than a $3 billion dollar franchise which has been built up. So it’s like high risks, high rewards kind of scenario.

RS: But when you compare it to something like what Steam is doing – they’ve just recently launched Greenlight, and it generated a lot of hype and excitement.

At first, any game could get on there because it was the community that was choosing the games. Then you had to pay $100 to get your game on there, and then it would go through the community voting process before going to the Steam store.

How do you look at Xbox Live – or the console digital media platform – competing with Steam which launching these new measures?

AM: First, I think that whatever Steam is doing is very encouraging for the industry as such, with What they’re bringing in as a new model of adoption for people to buy gaming content and play gaming content. What remains to be seen is that at what level – and I say this keeping countries like India, emerging markets, in mind – at what level would you be able to provide the experience given the entire bandwidth of the country? The entire internet experience you have in the country. How much can you stream, at what levels can you stream and then where do you compromise – do you compromise on the experience, do you compromise on the quality or gameplay of the game – that remains to be seen. I think it’s a very interesting model to look at, if you were to look at the music and video industry, you would imagine the gaming industry would go the same way. It just seems to be logical at this time, but a lot of factors need to be solved before the same experience like you get on music and streaming videos happens on the gaming side.

RS: Before all the power goes to the people?

AM: Before all the power goes to the people, the experiences are delivered through the pipe…all of that…a lot needs to happen. It’s a good start, it’s an encouraging start but it remains to be seen how successful they are and what kind of experiences they give. But you know, looking at media, just like any other media, it seems like a logical extension of where things would land.

RS: Steam’s Big Picture wants to transfer the PC gaming experience to the TV, only they want it to be, as an interface, something that people in the living room would be better used to.

They can use Xbox 360 controllers to play, and devices to wirelessly transmit their PC display to the living room.

Does this appear as a very big threat to what Xbox Live is trying to achieve, especially since Steam is completely free?

AM: I don’t think the concept of taking a PC gaming experience on to the TV…I don’t think that’s the big picture here. There’s two parts to the gaming experience. One part is the game itself, and the quality that you get. The other part is about your identity as a gamer, and what you do in a game. Seeing people come on stage [Halo 4 launch] and talking about Halo…these are hardcore Halo fans. Their thrill in life isn’t winning mini-competitions such as what we’ve held here, as much as it is about bragging rights about how much they know about Halo. That’s the reality of gamers.

There are different ways to look at how you can give a user a complete experience of different games meant for different screens. Xbox Live has games that would work on an Xbox, would also work on a Windows Phone – there’s just a few but there are – there could be more for the future. There could be games which are just meant for PC but the experience could be delivered on Xbox. But that is not technology innovation. That’s the easiest thing to do, to kind of give a smaller experience or a smaller quality experience on a higher platform. The experience could be what could I do with your identity as such, and keep your identity consistent so that when you play a game on TV, on a PC, on a phone, your Achievements, your score, your bragging rights around a game, are consistent across your network.

I think we’re already there to a certain extent, we enable the platform across all three devices, and it’s a matter of getting the content. More so, it is about getting the blockbuster content of Xbox on to the smaller screen, which could provide the “wow” factor so to say. But the other way around, seems to be there in most of the cases, and I don’t think that’s a difficult thing to do.

RS: Let’s talk about the intellectual properties scenario: Sony seems to be introducing new IPs every year whereas in 2008 and 2012 the biggest games seem to be, for Xbox 360, Halo and Gears of War.

So, what do you look at as the benefit of new IPs vs. timed exclusives or even yearly sequels?

AM: I think at a fundamental level, new IP is good for the industry. It provides a refreshing change from the standard franchises running. But having said that, from an Xbox standpoint, given the past 2 years, the focus that the company brought in to Kinect, every title that we’ve brought in was a new IP – every single title had a new experience. So, there’s a lot of innovation in terms of new IP when it comes to Kinect. When it comes to hardcore Xbox games, the reason these franchises have done well is because they have kind of created a personality of their own.

But the experience that you get every time you pick up a game from a franchise, especially the Xbox games, is very different. Today, if you pick a Halo 4, you could say that this is another version of Halo. But the reality is with the kind of multiplayer experience that we’re giving, with the kind of co-op experience, the changes in the storyline that we’re bringing, it just adds to the aura of the franchise itself. What do we see in the future?

I personally see that in the last two to three years, it’s kind of been an era of just franchises, whether it’s our platform, some one else’s or third party games, it’s just been one version after the other that’s come. I expect that to carry on for another year or two years maybe, at max, but I do see an opportunity where new IP would be created, especially because multiple devices would come into play and that just gives an opportunity for some one to create an IP, which would work across multiple platforms, and which isn’t bound to a console, or a phone, or a PC alone, and that just provides scale for taking the risk to create a new IP. I think today the industry realizes that it’s kind of risk-free if you have a big franchise and come out with the next version.

There isn’t any urgent need to create an IP, because while I said the past 2-3 years has been just one sequel after another, the fact is, most of the blockbuster sequels have worked. Whether it’s Call of Duty, FIFA, Gears of War or Halo, for that matter, every sequel, the large ones, seem to work in the market. So there’s no real reason why anybody would say that “Hey, I shouldn’t be doing this” as opposed to creating a new IP.

RS: Speaking on the next era of game development, Take Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick stated that he doesn’t see the next generation of development coming with increased development costs.

So if we were to see the next Halo coming to the next Xbox or something like that, then would we see a higher cost of development or lower, and how would that affect the overall quality of the experience?

AM: It’s a very subjective thing to define the cost of development. Now, just kind of speculating, the next Halo version…our intent could be to just take the storyline further, with the same functionalities and people would love that because the storyline, especially with titles like Halo, is very strong with the characters in it. We could choose to define the experience across different screens, a very different experience across different screens, or we could define the integration levels to be far bigger or higher with the next Halo game, or for that matter, the next Gears of War game. It depends on what I want to do with the game. If I just want to carry a franchise with the storyline, where the basic construct of the game remains the same, development costs could go lower because we already own the IP, the royalties don’t work that way, there is a set module of development for that particular game. But if I want to add innovation in terms of multiple devices or multiple UI, or multiple experiences, then the costs could go up. It depends on the franchise.

Halo is a big enough franchise – very profitable franchise – and to look at the next version and say, “Hey, what could we do different?”…there could be some franchises which are looking to just make good money and not risking too much of development cost to do too much with their franchise, because that’s what the consumers want. Fairly subjective in that sense, but I think both modules would exist…depends on which franchise you want to look at.

RS: Were there any prerequisite to making Halo 4 that “kind” of Halo experience or was there a mandate that something different has to be done this time?

AM: I’m again speculating here, than actually knowing about what went on with 343 Industries and the making of Halo 4, but from plain logic, the idea was we’ve had a Halo trilogy which has been out there. We’ve had different version of Halo after that – Reach, Anniversary, Halo Wars, etc. Now if were to invest in something like the next trilogy of Halo starting with Halo 4, we’d have to create an experience which is better than before, as simple as that. I think that would have been the fundamental point at which people would have started. And when we a “better experience than before”, the way it’s turned out now is that our online experience is better, even basic things like knowledge of the Halo franchise as such…I think it’s turned out better than before.

The entire Forward Unto Dawn series, that captures the entire story so to say, the way we’re building up Spartan Ops with the online experience and the co-op experience…it’s all very different, innovative stuff. And that would continue with any large franchise. You cannot have the same experience again and again, it just doesn’t make sense. This isn’t just Halo or Gears of War – you’d even see it in third party titles. FIFA 12 was different from 11, 13 was very different from 12 and there’s always things that would get added to the platform, otherwise you would lose the consumer.

RS: What are your thoughts on Nintendo’s Wii U console?

AM: I think…when we look at the Indian market specifically, Nintendo hasn’t really created a dent out here frankly because they don’t have operations in the country. So whatever comes into the market is essentially through parallel imports. But overall, we see that if you have to come with another version of the console as such, and this is  applicable to pretty much all the platforms, something has to be radically different and game changing for you to make a dent in the market. It’s not a matter of bringing out smaller innovations which others either already offer or can bring in very easily. You have to do some thing radically different. When we did Kinect, it was radically different. The way we are positioning Xbox Live is radically different, it will take a lot for others to even copy that kind of scenario. When you look at India, it’s really us versus Sony. Wii’s attempt…it remains to be seen how the market takes it up. A lot will depend on the kind of content they bring into the market and the innovations they do around that content. I don’t think our concept or our fundamental philosophy is…calling another device coming into play as true innovation, as truly next generation.

RS: For some developers, like Vigil Games who developed Darksiders 2, they’re finding development on the Wii U…to translate their games to that platform is much simpler than say if they were to create an experience on the Xbox 360 and port it to the PS3.

What audience do you see them garnering in the long run, because right now we’re seeing a lot of big-name titles, but it’s still positioned in such a way that it’s something that the entire family can enjoy.

AM: Fundamentally, taking an industry view and not just an Xbox view, all the three platforms would try to create the right balance between family audiences and core gamers. It’s just a stage in the industry where we are, where it’s a very delicate balance, and it’s a more marketing problem than anything else. How do you position a brand which is just as hardcore as a core game and then position a brand which would be as neutral or soft as a broad, family game category. With Nintendo, they were completely, at least in the recent past, having been very focused on the family side.

They’ve been trying to win the market through the family side, but there wasn’t really much innovation to happen to create that experience, and I think we and Sony have really taken the lead there, to capture most of the market. Now whether they create that balance with the core audience remains to be seen but I don’t think it will be a matter of one or two titles. It’s kind of –

RS: Kind of been an uphill battle.

AM: It is.

RS: For both you and Sony, because the Wii just found this family audience that loved the console so much for whatever reason.

And from there, it’s been that you can’t just offer the same thing that they have. You have to do something different. 

AM: Wii, at the time when they were unique from a motion gaming perspective, was a wonderful experience, there’s no doubt about it. But as a console, it is extremely important that you continue innovating. More importantly, that you continue innovating at a very fast pace. That’s when they saw the heat coming from Kinect, which is very new, which is far bigger than what they used to offer, and it’s probably a lesson for all of us in the industry, to understand that if just sit on a platform’s capability for too long, there would be others who would offer an experience or could offer an experience which will be very unique. And that could take a whole chunk of audience away from your platform.

From an Xbox perspective, I don’t think they’re doing anything that we’re not doing right now but I do see them not doing a lot of things that we’re doing. So it’s a fairly comfortable position for us to be sitting in.

RS: One thing that comes to mind, and this is something that Sony was pushing very hard with the Move, was 3D gaming.

And almost a year after touting it, almost no mention of it. So, what happened in terms of 3D gaming, or was the hype that time more than the actual momentum?

AM: I’ll give you a more India-specific answer for that. 3D Gaming has it’s dependencies on the TV. You need to have a 3D TV, etc. What we’ve seen in India is that while the technology is very well appreciated, there’s a lot of hype around it but the adoption of 3D in itself is not that much. It has a lot to do with the current experience you have, wearing the glasses, etc. I don’t think there’s anything as such that Sony did which was innovative in that space. We had Gears of War last year, around the same time, which was 3D.

A lot of games on our portfolio have in fact been 3D games. But the dependency is on some other device that needs to proliferate in the market, and people need to have that with them to experience a 3D game on the console. The console is capable of delivering it, even Xbox is for that matter, but it remains to be seen how 3D as a technology lands. I think it has to be made simpler…the experience has to be more smoother right now and maybe, in an Indian context, much cheaper, before 3D comes into homes at a scale at which everybody would want it to happen. When you’re playing a game in 3D, its fun, and a fairly good experience.

RS: Regarding the blockbuster development that we’ve been seeing in the past few years, we’re seeing these big releases but they’re essentially yearly sequels.

Like how many set pieces can cram in, the biggest names in composing, voice acting, what kind of scenarios we can create to just add on to the core experience, rather than trying something new.

This kind of “bubble” that’s being created for AAA game development in these yearly sequels – do you see it going bust soon or maybe evolve into something else entirely?

AM: I have a slightly different view to that. I don’t see that as a bubble at all. I think there’s a lot of value that the franchisees, the blockbuster franchises, have to offer, and they will probably continue to do so. The reality is that despite there being a Gears of War 3 last year, and despite the fact that there are multiple sequels of Forza and other titles, the biggest selling title in India was Kinect Sports. Which is a fairly new game to the Indian audience, and wasn’t a sequel to anything. Every single Kinect box we sold in the country, had Kinect Sports attached to it and given a gap of one to two months depending on the cycle of the second title which people were buying, the second title they bought was Dance Central. Much of this is also viewed in other emerging markets and even in more developed markets, but you see in a title like Kinect Sports or Dance Central, become blockbuster titles just because there was innovation in how you were interacting with the game itself.

I don’t think these are things that will change over time – you will get new IP and it’s difficult to see new IP reach the scale which the other blockbusters have reached, but at the same time, as long as the blockbusters have value to offer , as long as they have something different to offer, they will continue to do well. There’ve been instances of blockbusters – and we won’t name them – who in the name of the franchise have come out with multiple versions but have not done well, and that’s probably because there was nothing new to offer to the end consumer. For them it was just extended gameplay that they were getting, which in any case you get out of DLC.

That innovation is very important of the franchisees. Just as these franchisees have become big, they can lose customers very easily because the expectations are very high.