Tag Archives: Neil Thompson

PlayStation 4 and the next Xbox console won’t enable as dramatic a graphical leap as the previous console transition did, BioWare art and animation director Neil Thompson believes.

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The first pre-production shot of Dragon Age 3: Inquisition was shown last night during the Bradford Animation Festival, where Bioware art and animation director Neil Thompson gave a talk on the progression of video game art.

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Microsoft UK’s GM for sales and marketing, Neil Thompson, has said Microsoft will “really deliver” on Kinect this year.

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Microsoft UK and Ireland boss Neil Thompson has denied it has engineered shortage reports of Kinect ahead of the Christmas retail period.

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Xbox UK chief Stephen McGill has told GI that Microsoft isn’t looking at plans about creating a service similar to PlayStation Home for 360.

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Without the shades.

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Microsoft’s senior regional director for Northern Europe, Neil Thompson, has said bringing BBC iPlayer to Xbox 360 is not a top priority.

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The world of gaming may be buzzing after the reveal of the Nintendo 3DS and Sony’s emphasis on 3D gaming at E3, but Microsoft UK boss Neil Thompson has dismissed 3D as “an interesting technology of the future” that’s still too expensive for consumers.

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Microsoft’s Neil Thompson has weighed-in on cloud-based entertainment services, saying Xbox 360 will be “in the mix and active participants” should the industry become all things streaming.

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Activision’s Andrew Brown has quizzed Microsoft’s Neil Thompson, Sony’s Ray Maguire and Nintendo’s David Yarnton over on MCV on when digitally distributed titles will overtake boxed products.

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Xbox Europe boss Neil Thompson isn’t pleased with Sky’s launch on 360 in the UK. No sir. He’s had his fucking mind blown, man. He can’t handle it. He’s freakin’. Climbing the walls. Riding the wave. Shooting the goose. Which probably explains why the whole thing fell over the first day thanks to “demand“.

“We were blown away – literally – by the response we had, and we took some flak, probably fairly,” Thompson said in this GI interview.

“We didn’t scale to quite the scale we should have, and I take that criticism on board and we’ve learned from it. But now it’s up and running, people are loving it, the subscription rates, the download rates for the application and so on are just blowing my mind away, they’re blowing the people at Sky’s minds away.”

Whatever Neil’s having, we’re up for the double-drop, dude.

“It’s proving incredible popular… It is a phenomenal success at this point,” he added.

Hit this for details of packages, etc.

Microsoft has responded to last week’s Natal information which was leaked from a “behind-closed-doors tour of UK publishers and studios”.

This information, according to Xbox UK bossman Neil Thompson is not “accurate” and nothing more than “rumors”.

“I’ve got nothing more to say about it”, he told GI.biz. “We’re still very much in the baking on Natal and there’s a lot of things to get decided on it.”

“Now you know better than to listen to that stuff,” said Microsoft Europe’s Chris Lewis. “We will announce in good time. As you can imagine, we’ve shared this technology with our worldwide development partners now for some time, and the pace with which they’re developing the kind of experiences is just amazing.

“I’m not going to be specific about what they might be, I will say however we’re committed to ensure those experiences are unique, compelling and very exciting right from the outset. That has to happen and that will happen.”

It was revealed last week by a source close to MCV that Natal would release during November 2010 with 14 launch games at a price point of £50 or for as little as £30.

According to discussions set to take place during this month’s London Games Conference, with digital distribution “poised to outstrip traditional retail sales within three years,” 40 percent of the games industry is underprepared for the shift.

Speakers during the LGC will address the issue, along with Nick Parker of Parker Consulting, who believes that 2013 and 2014 will be the “likely dates for the next generation global launches” from Microsoft and Sony.

“For the first time ever, the games industry has a way of alleviating the pain that traditionally befalls it during generational decline, through online gaming in its many guises – it’s a genuinely exciting time for the industry and the London Games Conference is perfectly timed to discuss these opportunities,” commented Parker.

Speakers at the conference include Mark Gerhard from Jagex, Kristian Segerstrale from Playfish, Nick Pili from Sega, Pete Edwards from PlayStation Home and Neil Thompson from Xbox, along with an opening address from Ed Vaizey, Shadow Minister for Culture.

PR is through the break. The event takes place at BAFTA on October 27.

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Microsoft will be airing new 360 ads as of tomorrow designed to evangelise the machine’s non-gaming capabilities

“From October 2 we’re launching our own TV work explaining to consumers the broader entertainment offerings we have on Xbox 360, which is going to centre on our music offerings, movie offerings – and then obviously the unique TV experience we’ve got in connection with Sky, and the Sky service we’re bringing to Live,” northern Europe Xbox boss, Neil Thompson, told GI.

Sky features are expected to be patched into UK 360s this month.

Comedy actor Simon Pegg said yesterday that he’d recorded VO for HD streaming movie ads for 360.

Microsoft’s Neil Thompson is unsure whether British 360 owners will ever get the Netflix movie download service.

“Netflix is a great deal in the US, and we’re looking at what we might want to do here in the future,” said the Xbox UK bossman.

“But we think the content we’re offering is broad-ranging and pretty deep. We have to evolve the live service in different territories at different speeds, depending on what we’re able to achieve.”

Microsoft announced last week that 30 new Universal movies will soon be heading to the current UK service, and while this would bring the total amount of films up to 330, Americans currently have over 10,000 to choose from.

So when will the UK get the same benefits of a Netflix-style service? Thompson is unsure, because at this time they are concentrating on the current content being provided.

“I don’t know yet where we’re going to take the services we’ve got,” Thompson said. “We’re concentrating on delivering the services we’ve got and bolstering the content we’ve got.

“There will be evolutions of that service, absolutely, but I’m not going to give you any timelines or specifics.”

Full thing over on Eurogamer.

Speaking to MCV, Microsoft UK boss Neil Thompson has said the firm’s marketing spend for 360 at the end of the year’s going to be major stuff.

“On marketing we’ll spend tens of millions – we’re going to engage in a very bold promotional push from now until Christmas,” he said.

Thompson added: “We think that for high definition entertainment Xbox is first choice.

“We’ve been talking to all of our retail partners about what we’re doing at Christmas and we’ve been very bold and ambitious about how successful we think we can be.”

More through the link.

Not only could UK ratings make games appear later than everywhere else, but now Neil Thompson, Microsoft’s senior regional director for EDD in the UK and Ireland, says that it could make games more expensive.

“We’re in the business of providing great games to a broad audience of gamers, and we need to be able to fulfil that role by getting products to consumers quickly and at a good price,” said Thompson in an interview with GI.

“We’re concerned with any measures that would mean this process is made more unwieldy, or incurs additional costs which have to be shared with the consumer.”

Brilliant news that, I’m sure you’ll all agree.

By Mike Bowden

Speaking in the Guardian, Xbox Europe head Neil Thompson has pushed online distribution yet again as the future of digital content, saying the disc formats will be a nonsense within 18 months time.

“The horse that we’re fundamentally backing is the one that says the future of entertainment content is online digital distribution,” he said. “I would argue that we backed the right horse.

“If we’re sitting here in 12 or 18 months time, we’ll be saying ‘why were people even thinking about a disc format when it’s really about digital distribution?’ Our strategy’s been developed for the last six or seven years, and ever since we launched the platform it [online content] has been our big, big, big bet.”

Rarely shy with his words, Thompson explicity attacked Sony in the piece, claiming they’re struggling with their online services on PS3.

“I think it’s much less significant than the transition from VHS to DVD,” he added. “The fact that Sony are desperately trying to deliver an online offering means they probably understand that there’s another front they have to develop for.”

Much more through the link.

Neil Thompson, senior regional director of Microsoft’s entertainment division for the UK and Ireland, has just issued a statement to videogaming247 on the Byron Report, welcoming the measures related to games ratings and internet safety outlined a few moments ago.

“This is a timely and valuable report on what we believe is a key issue, ensuring that parents, Government, NGOs and the Industry continue to work in partnership to make sure that our children are safe as is possible online and only viewing appropriate content online or when playing video games,” he said.

“We would like to congratulate Dr Byron on the way she has run this consultation process and have been keen to fully engage with her Review team. Her report has brought further focus to this important issue.

“For our part, Microsoft is committed to producing parental control technology to allow parents to make decisions about what content they want their children to view – online or when playing video games. We look forward to continuing to work closely with all concerned to address these issues in the future.”

You can view the full report here.

According to this, Microsoft’s Neil Thompson – head of corporate affairs in the UK – has said he wants games ratings to stay with PEGI when Tanya Byron submits her reports of games age restriction to the government later this month.

“We made it very clear to the Byron Report team, both as an industry and as Microsoft, strongly believe that PEGI has a lot more benefits for customers, parents and for everyone involved in the industry really,” he said.

No one knows for sure what Byron is to recommend in the coming weeks, with both the formation of a new regulatory body and taking the BBFC to rate all games in the UK a possibility.