Kim: Microsoft to try Handheld Gaming
Shane Kim has confirmed portable gaming move
Microsoft’s Shane Kim has confirmed that the company is planning a move into the portable gaming market, saying that it was only a matter of time before the Xbox brand was applied to a handheld platform.
In an interview with Kikizo, Microsoft’s VP of interactive entertainment described the Xbox Live service as the “connective tissue” that would allow the company to move into mobile gaming.
“We understand that customers don’t want an island experience, they want to be connected to the rest of their lives,” according to Kim.
He continued: “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 instant-on 1080p HD, Facebook, Twitter, Project Natal. And 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.
“So the question will be, how do we enter into that market – do we do our own device, do we create our own phone – that’s a question for the company itself – do we continue to go down the Windows Mobile path, which is that path that we’re on today, etcetera, etcetera. But believe me, we understand the importance of that device in people’s lives. And the more we make Live about valuable service and add more content, and add more ways to connect with your friends through it; we’re going to need to make sure that it’s on all the important platforms in people’s lives, including PC.”
The full interview with Kim, where he also discusses Metal Gear, Natal, and the Xbox marketing strategy, can be found in full here.
You can sort of see Microsoft’s first forays into this with the XNA kit for the Zune. It really does smack of them dipping a toe into the arena.
They have pretty much everything they need to compete with the likes of Sony and Nintendo. They have a mobile presence with it’s own (albeit not entirely brilliant) operating system in WinCE, they have a small presence in the mobile media market with the Zune. The trouble is, the market has moved on – they aren’t dealing with just Sony and Nintendo now – in reality they also have to face up to Apple with the iPhone and eventually Google with their Android Partners.