Tag Archives: Microsoft Game Studios

Peter Molyneux’s told Edge that his new role as the European creative director of Microsoft Games Studios doesn’t mean he’s going to be ordering people about.

“Microsoft came to me and said, ‘It would be incredibly helpful to have someone such as yourself to creatively guide – and I want to stress that – it’s a creative guidance role,” he said, talking at E3 this week.

“I’m not going to go into studios and start designing their games. It’s just using my experience to help people through the development process.”

Molyneux’s new job was confirmed in LA this week, a move the Lionhead boss described as “very exciting”.

There’s a full interview through there.

Microsoft has announced its to acquire BigPark Inc, a company comprised of industry vets Wil Mozell, Erik Kiss, Hanno Lemke and Don Mattrick who created or had large roles in both Distinctive Software and EA Canada.

BigPark’s founding team has over 80 years of collective experience in the game industry, having produced or overseen titles Need for Speed, FIFA Soccer, Skate, NHL Hockey, NBA Street, and SSX.

The acquisition will meld the developers into Microsoft Game Studios, where the team will continue development on its exclusive Xbox 360 game.

“We are delighted by the opportunity to welcome the BigPark team into Microsoft Game Studios,” said Microsoft Games GM Phil Spencer.

“The team is composed of some of the most experienced and creative minds working in the industry today. The combination of the BigPark and Microsoft Game Studios talent pools will be an accelerant for growth and innovation. We believe BigPark has tremendous potential to create new properties and innovative gaming experiences for our platforms, one of which we’re looking forward to showcasing at the E3 Expo in June.”

Full thing below.

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Microsoft is planning to talk about plans beyond 2009′s Christmas season at next year’s E3, MGS boss Phil Spencer has said, talking in the latest Major Nelson podcast.

“The last two E3s at least, if I use that a proxy for what’s coming, we’ve talked a lot about what its coming in the next five to six months after E3, and we’ve had some pressure that maybe we want to think a little broader about what we want to say at E3, a little further out in the future,” he said.

“I came out of an E3 planning meeting just about an hour ago, and we were looking at some of the plans for the future and things that we might want to tease, and it’s very exciting.

“There’s a lot of stuff on the docket, and maybe we’ll break the bank a little bit and talk about things that are further out, which will hopefully get the community excited.”

Xbox720omgbbqwtf.

Listen to the full thing through the link. Spencer’s section is 15:06–30:44, and his comments about E3 are right at the end.

Shane Kim loves Nintendo, essentially because the company can make money out of things that don’t appear to be games.

He told VentureBeat: “I can tell you how that conversation goes at Microsoft. They say, ‘I don’t think that’s a game,’” Kim said in regards to Wii Fit. “But the guy at Nintendo says, ‘I don’t care. I’m selling a whole bunch of that stuff.’”

He went on to tell the article’s author “that it never pays to bash Nintendo. Rather, he said he loved Nintendo because it’s broadening the audience and is showing Microsoft what it needs to accomplish.”

There’s plenty more good stuff through there.

Speaking to GI, MGS head Phil Spencer’s confirmed that there’s a whole lot of Halo still yet to be revealed.

“There’s more than one team building Halo games right now,” he said. “There are more than two or three teams building Halo things right now… some of them we will own, some of them we won’t.”

Remember: it’s “exploring” they’re doing, not “exploting.”

Thanks, X3F.

MGS boss Phil Spencer reckons Xbox 360′s line-up is more than a match for PS3′s.

“Let’s start from the beginning of both consoles – PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 – which first party has had more success on their own platform? We have Gears, Halo, Forza, we’re continuing to push existing IP while bringing new IP to market. I’ll line up against Sony’s first party any day,” he told GI.

The exec also claimed he was happy to be matched to Sony’s first-party efforts this generation by any metric.

“We talk about games when we know what they are, when we can guarantee the quality to the customers, and we’ll say when they’re going to come out – I think the customers want that. But lining us up against Sony first party – I love that comparison,” he added. “Review score average, exclusive hits to-date, you pick the metric and we can talk about it.”

More through there.

GI’s got hold of the full email sent out to MGS employees from Phil Spencer detailing the Ensemble closure. Read the entire thing after the break.

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Kotaku sends word that Microsoft is expanding its internal Halo team for something big, but this time it’s not a rumor.

“As the Halo franchise continues to flourish, Microsoft Game Studios is growing its internal team to develop future Halo projects,” said a Microsoft rep.

Additionally, the big M confirmed that Gearbox director of technology Corinne Yu has hopped aboard the new flagship in the Xbox 360 armada, and that she brought her husband – a former art director at id Software – along for the ride. Kotaku’s sources say that they’ll both be working on Peter Jackson’s mysterious Halo spinoff.

And so the wait continues.

By Nathan Grayson

According to this Edge piece, Microsoft has signed a “perpetual licensing agreement” with Havok, which will allow MGS to use the company’s physics tech forever and a day.

More, modelling-based info through the link.

The Major’s announced the launch of a new Microsoft Game Studios podcast, called Platform Biased. We haven’t listened to it yet, but it features testers “Justin, Jeff and John”. Has to be worth a nose, doesn’t it?

Microsoft Game Studios has revealed to GamesIndustry.biz that that Shane Kim will be moving to take up the newly-created position of corporate VP of strategy for Microsoft’s interactive business.

He will be replaced by Phil Spencer, who was previously head of MGS in Europe.

Additionally it has been announced that corporate VP of global marketing, Jeff Bell, is to leave Microsoft to “pursue new opportunities”.

Xbox boss Shane Kim has issued a stoical take on 360′s position in Japan, saying that even an exclusive Final Fantasy series for the machine may not be enough to boost sales in the country.

“I think there’s just as much precedent that they would leave [the franchise],” Kim told Kikizo when asked whether or not a five-year Final Fantasy exclusivity would be worth buying.

“I mean if I were Square Enix that’s what I’d be worried about, that they would leave Final Fantasy for something else. I know we’re talking about Final Fantasy here, but you really have to question, is it really enough to overcome people’s reservations about Xbox 360 in Japan? I don’t know. But I know that it would have to be a heck of a lot of money and it would be very risky to do that.”

Kim added that success in Japan isn’t necessarily going to come from sales in Japan, and that western Xbox 360 achievement will be the driving force behind the console’s relationship with the country.

He also said that Microsoft is unlikely to ever do anything specific to Japan again in terms of Xbox 360.

“I think what’s going to help is in Japan ultimately, is success in the west, because the bulk of content that Japanese customers want to play is mostly going to come from Japanese developers and publishers, and we’ve already seen with Tecmo and Capcom that they see the success that we’re having in North America and Europe, and I think you’re going to see more Japanese content coming as a result of that – not necessarily because MGS made certain bets,” he said.

“We’ll still continue to look in Japan for new opportunities – we have some things coming that are exciting – but you probably won’t see us do something just specifically for Japan [again]. There’s a lot of great talent in Japan, but we’ll probably take more of a global perspective on that.”

Read the whole thing. Lots of good stuff in there.

Speaking to Wired, Xbox boss Shane Kim’s said that this hardware generation is still in early days and no one knows who’s going to emerge triumphant, if anyone does.

“Are we just amusing ourselves by trying to declare a winner and loser while the customers are still out there deciding? This is only the third year of our existence and only the second year of Sony and Nintendo’s existence,” he said.

“[Sony] a very good company but not a company that has won a generation in quite a long time. Will they get to expand beyond 35, 40 million to 100 million? Will anybody? I mean, that’s going to be an interesting thing to see: Will there be a clear-cut winner like there has been in the last two generations?”

Kim added that it’ll be fins to call a winner for this hardware round “when somebody’s well on their way to reaching 100 million units.”

Read the full thing through the link.

[Image courtesy of Game|Life]

Speaking at the Microsoft Gamer’s Day earlier this week, Xbox boss Shane Kim has finally put down perpetual talk of a Microsoft gaming handheld saying he’s pleased the company never entered the portable fray with Nintendo and Sony.

“I’m very happy we didn’t get into it, because launching a handheld platform is like launching another Xbox 360,” he said. “You have to be fully committed, as an organisation, from a resource standpoint, to doing that.”

“Frankly we’ve got a lot on our plate with Xbox 360 and Xbox Live. We don’t have any experience in that space. Our content assets don’t naturally lend themselves to driving success in that particular market. So we’re happy to let Sony and Nintendo slog it out.”

Read the full Eurogamer interview here.

The Eurogamer massive got a Kim interview too, the first bit of which just popped up on GI. Speaking at the Microsoft Gamer’s Day in San Francisco yesterday, the Xbox boss refused to be drawn on the states of play between his firm and Sony, saying only that the figures will tell the final story.

“I understand that Sony has declared leadership already,” he said. “We’ll let the data speak for itself.”

He also stopped the tides and rippled the fabric of universal matter by telling the site he thought 2008 would be a successful year for Xbox 360.

“What we’re really trying to communicate is that this is going to be another landmark year for Xbox 360,” he said, “mainly because we are really focused on the strategy of tremendous exclusive content. Titles like Gears of War 2, Fable 2, Banjo, et cetera. as well as the continuing leadership we have in the online space with Xbox Live.”

Hit the link for more. CVG’s already posted a full interview with the exec this morning.

Update: Sorry, our major bad. The Leipzig reference in the interview was to the game’s German showing in 2007, not 2008.

Xbox boss Shane Kim confirmed in a CVG interview last night that Ensemble RTS Halo Wars will be shown at Games Convention in Leipzig this August, but that the viewing will be in a “controlled fashion”.

“We’re not showing Halo Wars here today because we wanted to focus on these titles,” he said at yesterday’s Microsoft Gamer’s Day in San Francisco. “When we show titles we want to show them when they are ready. We’ve learned that from a few games we showed too early, like Too Human.

“I’m excited with the progress we’ve made, Halo Wars is a lot of fun to play but it’s not ready to show yet,” he added

“Here we wanted to do more hands-on time and Halo Wars isn’t ready. And I think you’ll see when we show it again, it’s evolved a fair amount. And it’s a mix of multiplayer and single-player and we want to show them at the same time.”

For the full Kim interview, see here.

Looks like an exclusive. CVG interviewed Xbox boss Shane Kim at yesterday’s Microsoft Gamer’s Day in San Francisco, in which he reiterates that Gears 2 is 360′s biggest game this year, the console’s life cycle in general and confirmation that Halo Wars will be at Leipzig. Must-read.

Speaking to CVG at Microsoft’s Gamer’s Day in San Francisco yesterday, Xbox boss Shane Kim put a hilarious boot into rumours of a motion-sensing controller for Xbox 360 by saying that he’d never heard of the device.

“I’ve never heard of a motion sensing controller,” he said. “I don’t know what you are talking about.”

The rumour of a Wiimote rip off for 360 originally came from MTV, and 8bitjoystick reckoned it was codenamed “Newton”. Just goes to show.

“I will say, look, we have a lot of research and development going on all over the place, in Live and in Hardware and we have a ton of success in the accessory business – and that’s probably a story that doesn’t get told enough,” Kim added.

“We’re going to continue to look at new ways we can introduce different things – the third parties are doing this as well with the music controllers. So there’s opportunities for us there too. We’re an R and D company at heart.”

Consider yourself told.

Shane Kim, corporate vice president of Microsoft Game Studios, has claimed Halo 3 has passed the 8 million sales mark at Las Vegas conference DICE, and has also mentioned that a gaming handlheld from the company is possible but unlikely.

On the subject of Halo, he reiterated the fact that more content’s on the way for Halo 3, and pointed out that the series is to expand this year with RTS Halo Wars. In addition, he mentioned the Peter Jackson collaboration announced at X06, but noteable didn’t called the product’s Jackson’s involved with “games”.

“We have a collaboration with Peter Jackson, creating an interactive series based on the universe,” he said.

On the subject of a portable, he said, “Never say never,” but “launching a portable device is like launching another Xbox 360… you have to really step back and ask, devoting whatever bandwidth and resources you would have to to make the Zune a multifunction device, is that really the best way to go?”

Games on Zune? That sounds like an awesome idea.