Tag Archives: Aaron Greenberg

Microsoft games boss Aaron Greenberg’s confirmed both Crackdown 2 and Alan Wake for a first-half 2010 release, speaking in the latest Major Nelson podcast.

“Starting in January we have like a triple A exclusive title pretty much every month for the first half of the year. You’ve got Mass Effect 2, you’ve got Splinter Cell, you’ve got Alan Wake, you’ve got Crackdown 2,” said the exec.

“You’ve got things like Fable 3 and Halo: Reach and coming later that year. Those are just the exclusives.”

Listen at about 31.50. He added: “2010 will be a bigger year that 2009: no doubt.”

No specific dates have been given for Remedy’s opus or Ruffian’s inaugural, but you probably wouldn’t be too stupid to be thinking “May-ish”.

Just saying.

Halo: Reach will be the biggest game of 2010, Microsoft’s Aaron Greenberg’s assured Gama, and not Polyphony’s GT5.

“Is it launching next year?” he joked of the racer.

“I’ve seen years and years of mini-games, but I haven’t seen that the game is done. They just released the PSP version – maybe that’s what they’ve been working on. I feel confident that there’s nothing that will compare in size. Halo: Reach will be the biggest game of 2010.”

Reach is expected towards the end of next year: GT5 is slated for a March launch in Japan.

Thanks, EG.

Over Thanksgiving weekend, the getting was good for Microsoft. How good? According to Director of Product Management for Xbox 360 and Xbox Live Aaron Greenberg, “biggest sales week of the year” good.

“Great #BlackFriday results just in, biggest sales week of the year for #Xbox360, more than 2xs previous week sales,” he tweeted.

Greenberg stopped short of producing any concrete numbers, though. Here’s hoping Microsoft fills in that particular blank over the coming days.

Now then, Sony, what say you?

Microsoft’s Aaron Greenberg has told Game Informer that he is unconcerned with PS3 and Wii price cuts, citing that PS3 being number one on the charts is expected.

“I can tell you to that when NPD releases September sales later today, we fully expect PlayStation 3 will come in as the console with the most units sold for the month,” he said. “This is frankly not a real surprise to us or the analysts that follow this industry, as it is typical to see a short term bump following the introduction of new hardware and pricing into the marketplace.

“What I can tell you is we remain confident that Xbox 360 will not only outsell PS3 for the full calendar year, but for this entire generation.

“It is similar to a game of baseball. It is not about just winning one inning, but instead being able to win the game by consistently delivering across all nine innings.”

More through Gamasutra.

Microsoft’s 360 software line-up is strong enough to hold off Sony’s first-party games this winter, Aaron Greenberg, newly-crowned “director of product management for Xbox 360 and Xbox Live,” has told Eurogamer.

As EG points out, Sony has Uncharted 2, God of War III, Heavy Rain, ModNation Racers, Ratchet & Clank and Gran Turismo 5 arriving in the coming months for PS3. Aaron’s not phased.

“I think if you first look at this holiday, we shape up really well versus Sony,” he said.

“Sure they have Uncharted and Ratchet, but if you want to play Halo 3: ODST, Forza 3, Left 4 Dead 2 or the GTAIV exclusive games you are only going to find those on Xbox 360. Then you have to add all of the exciting offerings we are bringing to Xbox LIVE with Facebook, Twitter, Last.fm and instant-on HD movies in 1080p.

“But of course if you look beyond this holiday you add in even more exclusives like Alan Wake, Mass Effect 2, Crackdown 2, Splinter Cell: Conviction, Halo: Reach and Project Natal. I truly believe Xbox 360 is uniquely positioned to deliver the leading games and entertainment experiences both today and tomorrow.”

Someone should get John Koller to say the same thing backwards. Full thing through there.

Aaron Greenberg has told G4 that the timing on the Xbox 360 price is was completely coincidental.

“Typically these types of price changes are targeted to drive sales for the holiday season,” said Greenberg. “However it is difficult for our retail partners to make these types of changes in November or December so we try to work with them to make these types of adjustments before things get too hectic at retail.”

As far as Sony’s price cut is concerned, Greenberg seems pleased for the consumer even when adding in a well-placed dig.

“I guess as a gamer I am glad I got an earlier PS3 console before they pulled a lot of the functionality like backwards compatibility out,” he said. “At the end of the day lower priced hardware is good for everyone and good for the industry as a whole.”

More through the link.

Xbox 360, eh? Price cuts, price rises, HDMI drama: all we need now is a slim model and we’ve got the full set.

Don’t hold your breath.

“We feel great about our console,” 360 production boss Aaron Greenberg told Kotaku.

“We have taken a different philosophy, adding more value to our existing console through updates and reinventing the system software.

“We feel like our system has done very well for us in the current form. We have no plans for a slim.”

Just remember this when Natal comes out. Fix it in your mind.

Xbox 360 production boss Aaron Greenberg has told Gamespot that 360′s RROD and E74 hardware disasters are now largely in the past.

“We’ve been working hard to make improvements in the products we’re currently making, so I really feel like most of this is well behind us,” he said.

Greenberg added that production advancements have given 360 greatly enhanced stability.

“I can tell you the consoles we’re making today have lower-heat chips and better cooling, and we’re seeing fantastic quality in those consoles today,” he said.

“That said, I know people have had issues with systems which were bought earlier in the life cycle and that’s part of the reason why we implemented our unprecedented three-year warranty for anyone who gets the three red-ring flashing light error or the E74 error.”

More through there. Thanks, rrod360lol.

Xbox 360 product boss Aaron Greenberg has said he believes Microsoft’s E3 performance was nothing short of “historic.” He also revealed that he owns a PS3, plays games on it and reckons Sony did a “good job” in LA earlier this month.

“Last year there were so many big games that we showed. We had Resident Evil, we had Gears of War 2, we had all the big blockbuster and people were like, ‘how are you gonna top that?!’ – and we did,” he told Major Nelson during a podcast interview.

“A lot of people thought it was the best E3 we’ve ever had, I definitely think it was historic. We dreamed of opening with The Beatles and closing with Steven Spielberg and it happened.”

“E3, I think, returned to all it’s glory,” Greenberg continued. “[However], it was the first year in maybe five years that I couldn’t get to the Sony and Nintendo conferences.

“I watched on TV both of them in their entirety but yeah, it was insane. I sent one of my staff and he reported back and yeah, it was good, I thought they had a good show, I think Sony did a good job.

“I hope I don’t get in trouble for saying this, but I’m pretty open in that I own a PS3 and I play games on it: I’m a gamer.”

Full interview through the link.

God’s sake. To cut a very long-winded story short, Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer said at The Executive’s Club of Chicago last night that a new Xbox 360 will hit the store shelves in 2010.

The machine, said Ballmer, is to have a “natural interface,” with built-in camera with the ability to recognize movement and voice.

The internet, obviously, went nuts, causing Xbox product boss Aaron Greenberg to get on the phone to various sites (including Destructoid) to say in no uncertain terms:

“I can tell you that we are not launching a new console in 2010.”

He added: “We’re not going to have to require customers to reinvest in an entirely new platform,” he says. “We’re able to add [Project Natal] on top of what’s already there.”

And: “This will work with your Xbox 360 if you’re buying one today, a year from now, [or] if you bought one at launch.”

Nelson also threw in his tuppence, saying, “We are not even halfway through the current console generation lifecycle and believe Xbox 360 will be the entertainment center in the home for long into the next decade.

“Project Natal will be an important part of this platform, but we have not confirmed a launch date at this time.”

So what was Ballmer talking about? A new 360 SKU with integrated Natal, probably, although Greenberg insisted in the wake of his comments that Natal’s route to market hasn’t been finalised in terms of time or method.

Back to DEFCON 3. Unlock the mountain.

If you want to talk to a Microsoft exec about where Xbox 360 stands right now, there’s probably no better person to speak to than product management director Aaron Greenberg.

The boss has just managed Microsoft’s entire E3 effort as executive producer – he ran Monday’s press conference – but took time to talk to us on at the firm’s LACC booth today.

Breakdown:

• Aaron’s a VG247 fan!
• Whether or not Microsoft won E3
• Why Natal will revolutionize home entertainment
• The question of Metal Gear Solid Rising platform exclusivity
• When we can expect to see Natal
• Natal games well into development
• FFXIV exclusivity
• “Bungie’s going to be doing a lot of work in the Halo universe”
• Aaron on Crackdown 2′s release date
• The biggest blockbusters are on Xbox 360
• Sony motion-sensing is “very derivative” of “Wii experience”
• “The only experience you need with Natal is life experience”

The full thing’s after the break.

More »

Xbox product boss Aaron Greenberg has told VG247 that Final Fantasy is not an exclusive product to PlayStation 3, but remained coy on whether or not the MMO will launch on Xbox 360.

“My understanding is that it is not exclusive,” he said in an interview today.

“That would be a good question to ask Square.”

He added: “I know that we have a great relationship with [Square]. They provided a number of big titles, including some exclusives like Star Ocean, along with having FFXIII demoed on Xbox 360.”

Square Enix senior VP Shinji Hashimoto has just confirmed to an E3 press event that it is considering “all options” for the game.

“We don’t want to make a copy of World of Warcraft,” a Square rep said.

SCEA boss Jack Tretton said in the Sony E3 press conference last night that the title was a PS3 exclusive, to release next year.

Microsoft’s Shane Kim and Aaron Greenberg has said that Project Natal and the company’s recent acquisition of 3DV tech have nothing to do with each other.

Project Natal has been in development “for a long time.”

“No, we built this in house,” echoed Greenberg.

“None of those rumours did justice to what we were actually doing with Project Natal. People expected a controller you put in your hands,” Kim told VentureBeat.

“We have done a lot of work in natural user interfaces. Voice recognition is one of them. That’s why we have been able to deliver development kits for it this week.”

More through the link.

Aaron Greenberg has said that American Xbox 360 users have unlocked 2.5 billion Achievements, earning an accumulated Gamerscore of 52 billion.

Averaged out, that means each 360 owner should have something like 150 Acheivements.

Wow. Baffles the brain a bit don’t it?

The numbers were revealed in a four page expose over on Gamasutra.

Thanks, OXM.

While we still don’t know exactly how many copies of GTA: The Lost and Damned were downloaded last month, Microsoft’s Aaron Greenberg said last night that the figure was more than that achieved by Killzone 2 at retail – 323,000.

The exec told Gamasutra the DLC was “the most successful game add-on content we’ve ever launched,” adding, “If that content was sold at retail, it would be one of the best-sellers across all platforms. It would have outsold Killzone 2″.

It’s worth noting that TLAD launched on February 17, while Killzone 2 released on February 27.

Thanks, Kotaku.

Aaron “Green Machine” Greenberg has claimed that Sony’s PlayStation 3 business is “hemorrhaging at retail,” based on a 2 percent year-on-year drop in hardware sales, announced by NPD last night.

“You can’t underestimate that we’re half the price of the PS3 at a time when consumers were looking for great value,” he told Gamasutra.

“The PS3 was down in February two percent even with the launch of Killzone 2 — that’s months of year-over-year declines. Xbox continues to head north while the PS3 is heading south. We’re gaining share.”

“But what we hear from our partners is that it’s not just PS3, it’s also PS2 down 62 percent year over year,” he continued. “With that business declining, and with the PS3 business declining, it’s been described to me as hemorrhaging at retail right now, and it just keeps getting worse.

“What we’re finding in our research is that a large portion of the volume we’re driving with Xbox 360 purchasers is actually PS2 owners choosing Xbox for the next generation. We’re switching people from the PlayStation brand over to the Xbox brand.”

PlayStation 3 sold 276,000 units in the US last month, the largest percentage increase of any hardware platform month-on-month.

Get the full figures here.

Microsoft’s Aaron Greenberg seems to think that the RROD days will soon just be a horrible memory in the history of gaming.

Speaking in an interview with Edge, the Microsoft bossman says, “We’ve improved that [repair] process. It’s very quick, and they may upgrade your system with the latest technology. So that works really well.

“What it comes down to is isolating and figuring out the issue, fixing the issue, and the more that we can fix the issue, and know it’s fixed, then we’re good going forward. We’ve put the worst behind us on this, but we know there are a few lagging systems, and so we want to take those and make it right.”

What these hardware updates are exactly is unknown: Greenberg says isn’t at liberty to divulge the specifications.

Xbox 360 director of product management, Aaron Greenberg has told videogaming247 that he expects 360 sales to continue their momentum in 2009 as this is the company’s first full year “at mass market pricing.”

He also told us that he feels fortunate Microsoft can offer Xbox 360 at half the price of PS3 and less than Nintendo Wii on a global scale.

“We are very excited about 2009 especially coming off the largest year in the history of our business in 2008,” said Greenberg to VG247 this morning. “We expect to see continued momentum in 2009 with our first full year at mass market pricing.”

“Similar to the approach we have taken in prior years, we don’t reveal our plans for the full year on January 1st and like to surprise consumers with announcements closer to when the products are available for release.

“But with that said, we have a lot for Xbox 360 owners to be excited about this spring including stuff like Halo Wars, Xbox LIVE Primetime, Resident Evil 5, GTA IV: The Lost and Damned, Street Fighter IV, and Star Ocean: The Last Hope just to name a few,” he added.

“This of course does not include our leading high definition entertainment library that continues to grow with new releases every week or our exclusive all-you-can-eat Netflix offering in the US with more than 12,000 instant watch movies and TV shows.”

Michael Pachter told VG247 last week that he expects Microsoft to reduce the price of the 360 even further in 2009. We asked Aaron Greenberg if he could echo that sentiment:

“Regarding another price cut, we have nothing to announce at this time and feel fortunate that we are able to offer consumers the Xbox 360 at half the price of the PS3 and even less than the Wii on a global basis.”

By Mike Bowden

Following some spectacular verbal duelling between the console platform holders on the state of play between PS3 and Xbox 360 this week, Wedbush Morgan’s Michael Pachter has told GameDaily he believes both sides make valid points.

Kicking off the latest war of words between Sony and Microsoft, PlayStation boss Kaz Hirai told the UK OPM that Xbox 360 had “longevity” issues and that PS3 was the “official” leader in the games arms race.

Xbox’s Aaron Greenberg responded by calling Sony “out of touch” and saying that 360′s US lead was unassailable, among other things. He probably said something about Kaz’s “mom,” too.

“Aaron Greenberg is right that Sony likely won’t catch Microsoft in the US until at least 2014,” said Pachter.

“Kaz is right that Sony will likely catch Microsoft globally.”

The analyst added:

“Please keep in mind that both consoles are offered in North America, Europe and Japan. Sony likely has a 4 million unit lead in Japan, is behind by 7 million in North America, and is behind in Europe by 2 million. My guess is that Sony can sell 2 million PS3s per year more than Microsoft in Japan for the next several years, and can catch up in Europe in two or three years. So by the end of 2011, Sony should be even in Europe, ahead by 10 million units in Japan, and behind by a greater margin than 7 million in North America. If the Xbox 360 outsells the PS3 by 1 million units per year for 2009, 2010 and 2011, the two consoles will be in a dead heat by the end of 2011.

“You should note that the 360 outsold the PS3 in the U.S. by 1.2 million units in 2008 (according to NPD), with an average price of $300 compared to an average for PS3 of $418. If PS3 comes down to $299 some time this year, it’s likely that the two consoles will sell around the same number of units, with a slight edge to Sony because of Blu-ray. If the 360 price is cut further, Microsoft can likely sustain its advantage, but it may have difficulty selling 1 million more per year.”

Expect more clashes of the titans as we move through the year.

Xbox production boss Aaron Greenberg has waded into PlayStation chief Kaz Hirai, saying comments he made to the British OPM about 360′s longevity show Sony is “out of touch” and “complacent.”

“This sounds like an old hardware company that’s comfortable with its market position,” Greenberg told The Bitbag.

“That complacent attitude is out of touch with where the industry and consumer is today. This generation won’t be won over just hardware specs, but who can out-innovate when it comes to online and software. This is the kind of stuff that’s in our DNA, and frankly moves the console war onto our home court.”

Hirai also told the UK mag PlayStation was the “official” industry leader. Greenberg begged to differ.

“I’m confident we will outsell the PS3 throughout the entire generation by providing more innovation and building the best and broadest games library while growing our entertainment experiences on the leading online network,” he added.

“With a US install base lead now of more than 7 million units (according to NPD), I can’t imagine any scenario where the PS3 can catch up with us. In fact, even if you doubled the current PS3 sales and Xbox 360 remained flat, they couldn’t close the gap until 2014.”