Tag Archives: shane kim

It’s a brave new world. Where console giants once ruled, app stores and social behemoths are setting up shop. Some console gamers, then, see their hobby as living on borrowed time. Former Microsoft big wig Shane Kim, however, doesn’t feel sky chunks raining down on his head just yet.

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Ex Microsoft Game Studios head Shane Kim has joined mobile games group Zipline. Kim will be brought in to advise on the company’s game development platform Moai, which is being used by Harebrained Schemes for Crimson, the first game to be published under Bungie’s Aerospace program. Kim, who was also recently added to GameStop’s board of directors, is also expected to help smooth studio partnerships.

Thanks, Develop. [Image]

Shane Kim, ex-corporate vice president of Microsoft’s Interactive Entertainment Business, has been appointed to GameStop’s board of directors, the company announced in a statement this morning.

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After 19 years of faithful service to Microsoft, Shane Kim has decided to leave the company in order to spend more time with his family. Kim, for those just tuning in, is corporate vice president of Microsoft’s Interactive Entertainment Business, and one of the most prevalent “faces” of the not-actually-micro mega-company’s gaming division. He’ll be making his exit this fall, according to a report by Industry Gamers.

In Kim’s wake, Phil Spencer will be promoted to corporate vice president of Microsoft Game Studios. He was formerly its GM.

For now, Microsoft doesn’t plan on filling Kim’s vacated position in its IEB, but you can bet that Phil Spencer will be seeing even more action without Kim around to lighten the load. Fortunately, he’ll be assisted by Dennis Durkin, who’s taken up the newly created mantel of chief operating officer of Microsoft’s IEB.

Has it really been 19 years already? Best of luck, Shane. Tell the wife we said “hello.”

Natal. It’s not a camera. It’s not a motion sensor. It’s not a knee-jerk reaction to Wii. According to Xbox super-chief Shane Kim, Natal is about bringing “hundreds of millions” of players to Xbox 360 – and winning this console generation.

“The generation isn’t over, and we’re not winning yet,” Kim told OXM.

“Our goal is to win, always has been. We want to have hundreds of millions of customers, whether that’s on 360 or on Live, and that’s our vision. That’s what Project Natal is about.

“Natal is not about responding to Nintendo and what they do with Wii, it goes well beyond what Nintendo and Sony are doing.

“This is about unlocking the potential and breaking down all the barriers that remain that prevent people who are intimidated or feel awkward with a controller in their hand – anything that prevents them from jumping in and having a great time with Xbox 360 and Xbox Live.”

You go, Shane. Natal’s expected toward the end of next year.

Shane Kim’s said that Xbox Live won’t be offering full games via Xbox Live simultaneously to their retail release any time soon.

“When it comes to us saying we want Games on Demand to enable day-and-date release of new titles, then there’s certainly a lot of work we would need to go through,” the exec told Fast Company.

“We’re not anywhere close to that world today. We have great relationships with the retail channel — they’re important partners. We sell a lot of hardware and software through retail channels.

“We have to be smart about how we approach this business.”

Full games are about to be offered for download through Live as part of 360′s summer dashboard update.

The roster seen so far consists of historic games, such as Mass Effect.

There’s a full interview through there.

Xbox boss Shane Kim has told Kikizo that Live is still on the way to mobile devices. Just in case you thought he’d forgotten.

“For us, it’s a matter of focusing on ‘when’, because if we chased after a mobile or handheld opportunity, we would not have the resources and ability to do things like… Project Natal,” said the exec.

“So we’ve chosen to focus on the living room experience from a hardware standpoint, if you will, but we’re building a service in Live that will… will extend to other platforms. No question about it.”

Microsoft announced Live Anywhere a million billion years ago. Actually, it was in 2006, but that’s in the same ballpark.

Hit the link for more.

According to Microsoft VP Shane Kim, the company feels it has claimed a victory in the third-party sector with Metal Gear Solid Rising coming to Xbox 360.

Speaking with Gamasutra at E3, Kim talked about exclusivity and how it benefits consoles.

“I still think exclusive content is really important,” he told the site. “First of all, in games, we’ve said for a long time that a key part of our strategy with Xbox 360 was a level third-party playing field. Now we’ve effectively done that with Metal Gear Solid coming to the Xbox 360.

“The economics are such that third parties also have to support multiple platforms, and you can’t ignore Xbox 360. It’s the second leading platform.

“But I also think we have to broaden our definition of exclusive content now. It has to include things like Xbox Live, because I do think Xbox Live is a real competitive differentiator for us.

“And now Project Natal is going to be an exclusive thing, too. And so, we feel good about how that’s shaping up, but it’s really not about relying on third parties, because I don’t think that that is sustainable, as we’ve proven. And it’s up to each of us to differentiate on our own.”

More through the link.

With Xbox 360 becoming a home entertainment system that offers not only games, but Netflix and soon Facebook, Twitter and Last.fm, Shane Kim wants to assure gamers that the console is still all about games.

“It happens to be a great video game console,” Kim told Kotaku. “That’s not going away. We want to make people understand that we’re not leaving the gaming space.

“I definitely think that we can expand off that base, and that gaming is still going to be an important part of entertainment.”

Bill Gates previously stated that the creation of Xbox was so the company could strategically “get into the living room.”

More through the link.

Shane Kim has said that when Project Natal launches it will be as big of a deal as when Xbox 360 hit the market.

“Conceptually, the launch of Natal will be like the launch of Xbox 360,” he told Kotaku at E3. “It’s going to be that big. We’re not just going to ship it when the hardware and software are ready. We have to make sure that there are enough content experiences that are really good.

“That’s similar to how you would think of the launch of a new console. It’s got to have a great launch line-up. That’s the same thing here.”

Kim also told the site that the company’s focus will not be the current generation of casual gamers.

“We’re not focused on this generation’s casual gamers or even PS2 people who haven’t upgraded. This is about the 60 percent of households were a video game console doesn’t exist… the problem is that the controller is a barrier for some people and now with Project Natal we completely eliminate that.”

More through the link.

Xbox super-boss Shane Kim’s told GI that Project Natal, the camera-based 360 control system aired for the first time at E3 last week, is going to change games completely. And possibly save the world.

“If we’d just come out with something that looks and feels like the Nintendo Wiimote, I think you could have fairly criticised us and said it was derivative. That’s not the path we wanted to go down,” he said, speaking in LA.

“We could have done that, but we wanted to reinvent the industry and revolutionise home entertainment. That’s what we will achieve with Project Natal.”

There’s a full interview here.

Microsoft corporate VP Shane Kim and new Sony European president and CEO Andrew House both agree that E3 is back baby and this year’s conference was the good-old-days reborn.

“It’s great to see it back,” said Kim. “We’re an entertainment business and we should act and talk like an entertainment business.

“We shouldn’t go hide in a corner. I’ve been doing E3 for some time and I’m really excited to see all the excitement and energy and noise and all the people come back, because that’s what we should represent.

“I feel very fortunate that we got to launch Project Natal this year, because in essence this is the rebirth of E3 and Natal is the perfect way to kick that off,” he added.

“I think you get a singular opportunity to have the press and everybody else focus on our industry for a week in LA – one of the entertainment capitals of the world,” echoed House.

“That’s pretty priceless. As soon as you took emphasis away from that we lost an opportunity to reach the media and by extension broaden our appeal as an industry as a whole, so I’m very glad it’s back.

“It’s absolutely worth the collective investment we put into it.”

Full thing including comments from Sega and Take-Two over at GI.

No Rare at E3. Why? The UK dev’s too busy making games that make you jump around your living room like an idiot.

“Rare is intimately involved with Project Natal in a number of different dimensions,” Xbox boss Shane Kim told Kotaku at the show this week.

“They’re doing an awful lot of work, even outside the traditional game space, I would say.

“Unfortunately I can’t go into a lot of detail about that. Rare is alive and well and really having a broader impact on the entire Xbox world than just doing the games they traditionally have in the past.”

More through there. Banjo cock games, please Rare.

Xbox boss Shane Kim has told Venturebeat that Xbox 360 will be on the market until 2015.

“We firmly believe that the Xbox 360 has a life cycle through 2015 (10 years after the launch),” he said, talking at E3 this week.

“Project Natal is a great innovation. It will work with every Xbox 360 sold. It’s not about pushing more pixels on the screen. It’s about how to break down barriers that stop people from playing games.”

Looks as though Ubisoft’s developing games for machines that don’t exist.

We linked to that interview yesterday, but do read it if you haven’t yet.

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.

Microsoft’s Shane Kim’s told G4TV that what we all saw yesterday wasn’t Microsoft Game Studios’ complete line-up for 2009.

“We didn’t put every Microsoft Game Studios game that’s coming out this year on stage, so I don’t think you can use that as the only proxy,” said Kim.

“But there’s no question that we have tremendous third-party support.”

More through the link.

Speaking at a Reuters media summit in New York, Xbox boss Shane Kim said yesterday that Microsoft’s entertainment unit is preparing for “tough times” next year, and that he’s not expecting the same level of growth seen in the games industry in 2009 as has been seen in 2008.

“Who knows, maybe flat performance will be considered a remarkable achievement,” Kim said. “It’s difficult to predict the future,” he said, adding that the gaming industry has traditionally fared well in economic downturns as people turn to stay-at-home entertainment.

“A big objective for us is to deliver most entertainment value for the dollar,” he added.

More through there.

Xbox boss Shane Kim’s told Forbes that tomorrow’s NXE launch heralds a major step in a journey from Xbox Live as was to a Facebook-esque networking tool.

New Xbox Experience is “a big part of [Live's] transformation from a multiplayer matchmaking service to a social and entertainment network,” he said, adding that “Microsoft will be “investing more in social networking capabilities.”

Kim also claimed that NXE is a signal that Microsoft is trying to “tap into is the growth of social networking and the disruption in the media industry.”

NXE, the major Xbox 360 UI revamp, is about to kick off. Ready?

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 Edge, Xbox boss Shane Kim’s admitted that the console MMO conundrum is still vexing Microsoft, and no answers are yet on the near horizon.

“I’ll admit MGS has not had success in the MMO space, and that happened under my leadership, so I take full responsibility,” he said.

“It’s a tough and challenging space that’s evolving all the time – a lot of shifting sands. We haven’t been able to crack the code.”

He added: “Game development is hard enough as it is – in the MMO space you’re talking an even bigger investment, basically double. So it does add that layer of complexity – we just haven’t found that right mix.

“I think we’ve made the right decision not to proceed with those things like the Marvel MMO. And that’s tough, both for customers looking forward to it and teams working on it. That said, we haven’t been successful, but there’s nothing to say those titles can’t be successful on 360.”

Plenty more through the link. Good read, that.