Microsoft’s Shane Kim: 2008 line-up, Halo Wars, and the success of GTA 4

Shane Kim, Corporate Vice President of Microsoft Game Studios, was present at the recent Microsoft spring showcase in San Francisco where he spoke about various issues including the success of Grand Theft Auto 4 (Xbox 360, PlayStation 3), the company’s 2008 line-up, Halo Wars, and more. To find out what he had to say, head on over to the full article.

Shane Kim, corporate Vice President of Microsoft Game Studios, had a lot to say during Microsoft’s San Francisco showcase. During the event, he talked about Microsoft’s 2008 line-up, the success of Grand Theft Auto 4 (Xbox 360, PlayStation 3), Halo Wars, as well as the competition with Sony and predictions that the PlayStation 3 has outsold Xbox 360s in Europe.

First up, he spoke about two of the biggest games that should be arriving this year. While he was rather hesitant to pick which of the games would be rocking the boat so to speak, he came up with Gears of War 2 and Fable 2.

Another topic Kim discussed was how the Xbox 360 version of Grand Theft Auto 4 is pushing console sales. Here’s what he had to say about it:

I just read that apparently 65 percent of GTA IV sold is on Xbox 360, which is huge. That’s a huge victory for us. I’m pretty sure that a lot of the people that have bought GTA IV own it on two platforms but they are preferring to buy it on Xbox 360. And of course we have exclusive downloadable content – and we’ll be pushing that very heavily.

Surprisingly, Halo Wars was not one of the featured games in the event. According to Kim, they are focusing on the game and still aren’t ready to show off all the new changes the developers have made to it:

We’re not showing Halo Wars here today because we wanted to focus on these titles. When we do show titles we want to show them when they are ready. We’ve learned that from a few games we showed to early, like Too Human.

Finally, Kim spoke about a relatively hot issue right: console sales in Europe. While Sony and analysts have been saying that the Sony PlayStation 3 has outsold the Xbox 360 this month, Kim pointed out that they still have a bigger  installed base and that they’re working hard to create momentum for the Xbox 360:

With regards to the European numbers, I think we’ve got to look at the data and see what it says, because everyone like to quote their own numbers. I can tell you that since we reduced the price of the Xbox 360 In Europe we’ve seen a lot of re-invigoration of the install base and seen sales pick up – our challenge of course is to sustain that.

So there you have it, a ton of information on the upcoming releases from Microsoft as well as a little insight on the company’s view regarding console sales. In case you want to find out more about any of these topics, you might want to follow our source link below.

Via CVG