Tag Archives: robbie bach

Speaking to Reuters, Xbox boss Robbie Bach has claimed the general economic slow-down in the US is not affecting Microsoft’s entertainment business.

“We have not seen, on the consumer side of our business, a slowdown,” he said.

The exec, speaking at an American event, said the firm’s Xbox division had been doing well, noting that the games business moves on new release cycles and not economic ones.

Bach also said he expects Xbox to have a strong holiday shopping season.

More through the link.

Robbie Bach has said that it’s still too early to tell whether or not Microsoft will try to take first-mover advantage in the next console generation, saying only that the company will be selling Xbox 360 for years to come yet.

“Too early to tell,” he said when asked if a new machine would come before a new PlayStation console. “Our view is we will be selling Xbox 360 for a long time.

“We are always working on new technologies. We have people working on those. People ask me how many people I have working on the next generation. On the one hand, it’s everybody. On the other, it’s nobody. People are continuously working on new technology.”

Full thing on Venture Beat.

Microsoft entrtainment boss Robbie “The Terminator” Bach reckons there are “cautionary tales” to learn from PSP, and he wants to apply them to Zune.

“The PSP is a reasonably successful product at the profit-and-loss level,” he said in this Venture Beat interview. “But as a product concept, there are cautionary tales to learn from it. While it is good at producing audio, it’s not a good music player because it doesn’t have local storage (except for flash memory slots). You can’t keep your music there. It has a beautiful screen, but you can only get the video under the Universal Media Disc format. That format hasn’t been successful.

“On a game level, it has done well. But even there, it is mostly PlayStation 2 ports. There isn’t much original content. When you do these devices, they can’t be pretty good at a lot of things. They need to be great at what they do. Zune is a great music player. We have local storage, a marketplace, the social network. We didn’t do video right out of the gate because you want to do those things in a high-quality way. Same thing in the gaming space. It is technically possible to do games on there. But you aren’t going to see a broad gaming effort from us until we sort that through and have it figured out. I don’t think of Zune like the PSP. The PSP is a game player that also does video and music. We think of Zune as a broad-based entertainment device.”

Loads more through there. Fill your Friday.

That was quick. Despite a Crunchgear report yesterday rumouring a Blu-ray-powered Xbox 360 announcement today, Microsoft entertainment devices boss Robbie Bach has already boxed it.

“That is so far out that there isn’t anything to talk about,” he said in an SFGate interview.

Bach added: “You have to look at how fundamentally compelling the difference is between a progressive scan DVD player and the picture that it can produce and what you get on a high-definition player. The reality is there is some difference, but most people look at it and say, ‘I am not going to pay extra for that.’”

Look, internet: it isn’t true. These, of course, are famous last words and it’ll probably be announced this afternoon. Saying things aren’t true is a little like smoking while you wait for buses, especially when Microsoft’s concerned.

Microsoft is to supply “hundreds” of 360 kiosks to American children’s hospitals, the company has announced.

The initiative is the result of a partnership with the Companions in Courage Foundation charity.

“Microsoft is committed to keeping kids entertained in a variety of ways within a safer gaming environment, so partnering with Companions in Courage to offer children in hospitals a way to connect through something as universal as games is a natural fit for the work we do,” said Xbox boss Robbie Bach.

“The goal for this program is to give these kids a chance to have some fun and just be kids.”

Press release after the link.

More »

Double uh oh. Videogamer.com reckons the recent Sith Gamer interview with Robbie Bach, which detailed some of what Microsoft is expected to show at GDC next month, is “entirely fictional”.

The interview, which claimed Alan Wake and Halo Wars would be shown at the California developer conference, was picked up all over the web, with a showing of Alan Wake now a truth in the mind of the internet. We’re not just talking about small sites here, either.

“It now turns out that all this teased info has come from the mind of the blogger, Microsoft informing VideoGamer.com that this interview is entirely fictional,” said Videogamer.com’s report.

Well, if this story’s correct there are going to be alot of red faces in the morning. Thanks to Videogamer.com for what has to be the funniest story of the week so far.