Shane Kim Talks 360, PS3, Windows …

Shane Kim, general manager of Microsoft Game Studios, recently gave out an interview wherein he talked about the Xbox360, its toughest competition the PS3, and Windows. Among the many questions asked was about Sony‘s Phil Harrison questioning Microsoft’s 10 million mark for the Xbox 360 this year, and how Peter Moore shot back at him questioning Sony’s goal of 6 million PS3s shipped by March.

When asked for his comment on this, Mr. Kim jokingly replied “well, I work for Peter [laughs]. So I agree with Peter on that. We would not have come out and said that we would reach the 10 million mark this year unless we clearly believed that we were going to be able to do that before Sony even ships the first units of the PlayStation 3. That’s 10 million units in the hands of customers. As far as their [Sony’s] ability to make the 6 million units by March—we’re not really the guys to comment on Sony’s production capabilities. We do know how difficult it is to produce a very complex piece of hardware… they’ve got two very different SKUs now.”

Read the rest of the interview after the jump!

Shane Kim, general manager of Microsoft Game Studios, recently gave out an interview wherein he talked about the Xbox360, its toughest competition the PS3, and Windows. Among the many questions asked was about Sony‘s Phil Harrison questioning Microsoft’s 10 million mark for the Xbox 360 this year, and how Peter Moore shot back at him questioning Sony’s goal of 6 million PS3s shipped by March.

When asked for his comment on this, Mr. Kim jokingly replied “well, I work for Peter [laughs]. So I agree with Peter on that. We would not have come out and said that we would reach the 10 million mark this year unless we clearly believed that we were going to be able to do that before Sony even ships the first units of the PlayStation 3. That’s 10 million units in the hands of customers. As far as their [Sony’s] ability to make the 6 million units by March—we’re not really the guys to comment on Sony’s production capabilities. We do know how difficult it is to produce a very complex piece of hardware… they’ve got two very different SKUs now.”

He continued by saying that “they’ve (Sony) got a lot of different hardware functionality in the $500 SKU versus the $600 SKU and that’s a lot of complexity from a manufacturing standpoint. And then to do a worldwide launch is also challenging…Sony even came out and said, “Look we’re not going to produce as many Blu-ray drives as we previously thought.” So there’s going to be a lot of manufacturing challenges for them. I do agree with Peter, and I think it’s going to be interesting given the prices they’ve now announced to see if customers will respond well to that and will want to step up to the $600 version of PlayStation 3.”

He also talked about MS’ broadening the market in a way that younger gamers could enjoy some good, clean fun. He replied with “I (he) think the key point here is we don’t expect to deliver the bulk of that content targeted at a broader demographic, a younger demographic. What we need to do with a title like Viva Piñata is get behind it in a big way, and the partnership with 4kids Entertainment and the television series and merchandising that they’re so great at doing is a foremost component of that.”

Updating the Xbox Live was also a hot topic during the interview as Mr. Kim said that “What we want to do with the tremendous success of Xbox Live Marketplace—we’ve had 18 million+ downloads coming into E3 and then on Wednesday within a 19-hour period we had over a million downloads with all the E3 content we put up—so as more and more success happens we’re adding more Xbox Live Arcade titles, more downloadable content for games, more music videos, movie trailers and other entertainment content. We’ve just been putting up more content on Xbox Live Marketplace but we have to make it easier for customers to find the content that they want, when they want it, whether it’s digital entertainment or games content…We’ll bring those same continuous improvements to Xbox Live Marketplace.”

Microsoft recently announced a greater push for its Games for Windows platform and getting the right balance of resources to proportion between Xbox 360 and Games for Windows was also tackled. He replied by saying that “it’s not really hard because we’re the first party on both platforms, so from a strategy standpoint we’re part of a larger strategy for the platforms; we have plenty of resources to do what we need on both of those platforms. I don’t usually find ourselves in a position that’s like “Gosh, we can only do this title on this platform or that title on that platform.” [We’re guided by] what’s best for Xbox 360 and what’s best for Windows and Windows Vista and is there an opportunity to connect the experience… like with Shadowrun. That integrated experience showcases what we’re doing with Live and Live Anywhere.”

Obviously, Microsoft is ready to slug it out with the PS3 and with the Wii by bringing their best features to the table. So what do you think about these statements? Do you think that the Xbox 360 could cater to the wants of a much younger market? What sort of improvements would you want for Xbox Live? Tell us through your comments.

Via GameDaily Biz