Microsoft's Shane Kim on All Things Xbox

"I've been around the industry long enough that I've experienced the launch of Halo, Halo 2 and Halo 3, the Xbox 360. [Project Natal] feels as big, if not bigger, than any of those things."
6/18/2009 12:11 PM | 0 Comments | Page 1 of 5

The dapper Shane Kim sat casually in a chair behind closed doors at E3, his legs crossed; his button-down shirt, one button opened. Like all the Masters of the Universe at Microsoft, the vice president was dressed casually, but one step up from casual -- no polo shirt, no denim shirt, no logo shirt. He had that look in his eye, the one that says, "I'm ready to talk. You got the right questions?"

Frankly, I was a little P.O.'d about E3 because, as I wrote in a Slate story, no companies addressed this great recession during their dog and pony shows. Yet Kim calmed me down somewhat as we talked about why Microsoft didn't address the downturn, his long history at Microsoft and the exciting but still somewhat elusive Project Natal (which lets you very precisely control a game, movies and Xbox Live apps via a camera).

Crispy Gamer: One of the more general questions I had about the E3 press conferences is that no one mentioned the R-word. Or even, "Times are tough; we're going to get through this together." When you're thinking about writing a script for a briefing like you had, what makes you say, We're not going to touch that?

Shane Kim: Well, we decided we wanted to show, not tell. Historically, we have presented a lot of data. We just decided we've got much to show this year, almost too much to show. We wanted to get right to it. So it was pretty easy for us to say, We're not going to talk about the state of the industry.

Crispy Gamer: I saw an opening for a kind of "times are tough; we're going to get through this together" moment when Joy Ride was presented. That's a free game and it could have worked at that moment.

Kim: The motivation there, though, is not the economic crisis. It would have been disingenuous to talk about it [with Joy Ride] to be honest, at least in my mind. For us, it's more important that it's a new model.

Crispy Gamer: The game is free. But you buy add-on extras as microtransactions.

Kim: That's what we want people to do. It's a model that doesn't exist in the console space and is now possible because of Xbox Live. It's wrong to say, this is free because times are tough. The truth of the matter is, if you want to get the most out of it, you're gonna pay.

Crispy Gamer: I've never seen a more star-studded press conference -- Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Yoko Ono, Steven Spielberg, Tony Hawk.

Kim: E3 is going through a rebirth, and so is Microsoft with the Xbox 360. That's why it was important to us.

Crispy Gamer: Really, a rebirth?

Kim: You can go crazy with those parallels. But it was fun to be able to kick off the show with people who are that important.

Crispy Gamer: You went to Harvard for business school. Did Harvard help?

Kim: It has helped quite a bit. In Harvard, the Socratic method is an interesting way to learn. Sometimes it's difficult to pinpoint and I ask, what did I learn? But at the end of the day it's critical thinking. Microsoft is its own education, too. Did I think I would end up in the videogame industry? The answer very clearly is, no. But I can't think of a better place to have spent my career.