Supersonic
Bekanntes Mitglied
Microsoft hat den Audiostream eine Konferenz mit Analysten auf der E3 veröffentlicht:
Meiner Meinung nach fast interessanter als die Hype-mässsigen Konferenzen für die "normale" Presse. Hier gehts um Marktanteile und ums Geld verdienen...
Meiner Meinung nach fast interessanter als die Hype-mässsigen Konferenzen für die "normale" Presse. Hier gehts um Marktanteile und ums Geld verdienen...
Interested in Xbox? Got an hour to spare? Check out Robbie Bach's presentation to financial analysts at E3. (Robbie Bach is the Chief Xbox Officer.)
http://www3.vcall.com/auto/companies/microsoftcorporation/MSFT/default052102.htm#
Here's a rough transcript:
+ Selling great in US
+ Selling equal with PS2 in Europe since the price cut
+ Not selling well in Japan, lack of compelling content. "Working very hard on fixing that".
+ 200+ games available for Christmas
+ Xbox Live features
+ GamerTag - one identity that carries across games.
+ Cross-game buddy lists, cross-game invitations.
+ Voice is super-important.
+ Good matchmaking
+ downloads
....
We planned the price drop for six weeks.
This week we start a $10 M advertising campaign about the price drop.
Over the next five years we plan to spend $2B on Xbox, Xbox Live, etc.
- the NYT article that said Xbox Live costs $1B was not a quote from Microsoft -- it was made up by the NYT.
Q/A
Q: How many Xboxes are you planning on selling?
A: 9-11 M by June 2003 (end of Microsoft fiscal year)
Q: Is $2B for just this Xbox, or also for Xbox2?
A: Both today's Xbox and preparation for the future.
Q: How long are you willing to lose money on hardware? Are you going to be in hardware for the long term? How low can you take the price?
A: We expected to have to drop prices exactly on schedule. We expect to be a hardware provider for the long term. We will evaluate the hardware price quarter by quarter.
Q: What do you think about online now, and in the future, and how does that tie into software sales?
A: This year it's not a big money maker. We think 10K - 100K adopters early on. As we get into calendar '03 and calendar '04 it starts to make serious money. But it won't be a rocket ship overnight. ... If you look out five years, games are going to be online. Just like games shifted from 2D to 3D.
Q: What about share of online market?
A: I won't predict market share, but I think we have an advantage because we've got built-in support for Online gaming. Good games coming in '03. (Halo, KOTR)
Q: What's your long-term market share goals?
A: Our run-rate basis is 25%. We think that will go up over time. We are certainly in this business to become the leader. (Maybe not until next generation.)
Q: What about first-party pricing, royaltee arangements, online etc.
A: No answer at this time. We want a percentage of any premium service that uses Xbox Live. (But no charge if the game doesn't charge.)
Q: Will you do a "Greatest Hits" price model like Sony did?
A: Yes, eventually, also a "Family Entertainment" set of games. But it's too early to talk
about that now. We've only been selling for five months.
Q: Will you let Sony have a jump-start on you in the next generation of consoles?
A: No, we will not let them have a jump-start on us.
Q: What about users exchanging content?
A: We're working on it, there are security issues.
Q: Premium services? Will MS limit third parties?
A: We will not limit third parties at all. There was some confusion about who owns the customer. We are very clear - if you buy a Sega game, you're Sega's customer. If you buy an EA game, you're EA's customer, just like with offline games. I think our publishing partners know that.
Q: What's your first party / third party mix? What do you think about Xbox's role in home entertainment?
A: We would like to see 25% - 30% MS, 70%-75% third party. But the number varies over time depending on the quality of our games.
Home entertainment: There's a trend in the marketplace towards digital entertainment. You can RIP music, play DVD movies today. In the future we might do something with Music and Video and the online service. But it's far out in the future. We're focused right now on video games.
Q: What's the ISP's role in the Xbox Live business model? What about EA?
A: If you're a broadband ISP, we'll work with you. We will do marketing programs with various people at various times. Just like we work with retailers.
Regarding EA, they're one of our biggest game providers. It's been a great business for them. They're unique in this space because they've invested $300M in their own online infrastructure. We're working through the business issues. They do a great job of supporting their own games, but what if you want to do the online-invitation thing between Madden and Tony Hawk? Their model kind of falls apart there.
Q: Do we have that key AAA title that's really going to drive the platform?
A: Like last year, I think we have three or four titles that may drive the platform. We think Blinx, Panzer Dragoon, KOTR, Dead-to-Rights and Splinter Cell might be the good games.
Note that nobody even noticed GTA3 at last year's show - and look how it turned out to be a system seller.
So our job is to polish all the existing games to make them great.
By the way, I think Halo is going to sell a ton this holiday, just because there are new buyers.
Q: What about Flextronics and manufacturing?
A: Flex has done a great job for us. We continue to work with Flextronix as our lead manufacturer. We are expanding with Flextronix in China.
As for other people, we have nothing to announce.
Q: What's the royaltee araingement on the Xbox Live premium packages? How do you make money on Xbox Live?
A: No comment on the royaltees. We plan on making money by selling games, both first party games and third party games.
Q: What installed base do you need in order to make an operating profit?
A: We could make an operating profit today, if we wanted to minimize market share. But we're trying to grow the installed base, and we're lucky that the attach rate is high,
which helps a lot. My job is to build the market share, and build the installed base. That's how we're going to run the P&L.
Q: What's the update on things with NVIDIA? How long do you have to work in advance with someone to do an Xbox 2?
A: We're working with an arbitrator, nothing to report there. In terms of working with people in advance, for Xbox 1 it was an 18 month project. For the future we have a little bit more time. It might make things easier to do. You would like to get dev kits to developers sooner than that. But it really depends upon advanced planning.
Q: Will you let the lawsuit affect your planning? [I think that's the question.]
A: No, they're not related at all.
Q: What was the motivator for people buying an Xbox last year, and how will it evolve this year? Will your marketing change?
A: Last year it was about seeing games that people hadn't seen before. We had five games sell over 500K units. (Halo, PG, NFL Fever, DOA3, Max Payne.) It's all about the games.
Our marketing was very successful. We became a synonym for "Cool". We created an environment around the brand. We'll continute that this holiday, but we're also going to expand beyond the 18-25 year old male market. You'll see that in the game content. e.g. Blinx, Loons. Wider, broader range of content.
Q: [inaudable] Aren't you going to be number 3?
A: No, we are doing really well in USA an Europe.
Q: [inaudable] How come your guidance numbers are so different than Sony's?
A: I stand by my numbers. We're going to have a great holiday.
Q: Do you need any of the five titles you mentioned (KOTR, etc.) to be stupendous titles?
A: Every year there needs to be 15-20 titles that are exciting to buy. We have 4-5 titles that are really exciting, that people are going to go out and buy.
