MS head honchos talk Michael Bay, Activision Blizzard and renting movies through your 360.
European 360 owners will have woken up this morning to find a nice surprise - they can now rent movies old and new through Xbox LIVE. To mark the occasion, VideoGamer.com sat down with Stephen McGill, head of gaming and entertainment and Robin Burrowes, Xbox Live marketing manager to get the low down on the Xbox LIVE Marketplace Video Store and what it means for you.
VideoGamer.com: Let's begin with an outline of what gamers can expect from the new service.
Robin Burrowes: Gamers can expect an initial selection of 27 movies, the bulk of which are in high definition as well as standard definition. We have plans to build that up to 40 by the end of 2007 and then over 2008 to grow not only the portfolio but the amount of partners that we're working with and continue to offer a blend of current great movies that are in the video in demand part of their marketing timeline coupled with great library content as well. So gamers can expect to see a bunch of familiar titles, some that they know, some they may have seen in standard definition before that they can see in HD as well as great new movies.
VideoGamer.com: So what are you personal picks from what's on offer?
Stephen McGill: Mine's 300 and The Matrix!
RB: I was going to say The Matrix. Mine is probably more Analyse This and Analyse That because they're very watchable great movies that you can just laugh at every single time. I look forward to seeing Risky Business again because that's something that has been put in HD, which is the beauty of the service - being able to offer old content. Something like The Matrix for instance people have bought and seen, is now extended into another life because it's now in HD.
VideoGamer.com: Will there be any added content for these releases?
RB: No added content. Just the movie being re-polished and reedited and recoded in HD.
VideoGamer.com: What are the details behind the movies being rental only?
RB: You rent them for two weeks, so you have a 14 day time window. Within that 14 day time window you've got 24 hours to watch that movie. You can watch it as many times as you want within 24 hours but as soon as you press play that content will no longer exist 24 hours later.
VideoGamer.com: Why do it like that?
RB: That's just industry convergence. We're in a time window and that is the terms and conditions that we are operating with all our partners.
SM: And it's a better deal than you would get if you were renting a movie, you know go to Blockbusters and get it for three days, I think we're good value, at some point you've got to give it back.
VideoGamer.com: What about pricing?
RB: 250 points for SD for library content, which equates to about £2 and just over £3 for HD version of library content or 380 points, and then for current movies it's 360 points for SD and 540 points for HD. In terms of what that means in great pounds and pence, £3 for SD and £4.50 for HD.
VideoGamer.com: Were you looking at something like Blockbuster for comparison with pricing?
RB: Not specifically. Because it's an international roll-out we've looked at all the price benchmarks that exist in each local territory and then have a pricing strategy that wraps around that that offers good value to our audience.
VideoGamer.com: Is this service a perfect fit for the typical Xbox 360 owner?
RB:We think it's a perfect fit for the current Xbox LIVE audience and we also think it's a great fit for the future Xbox LIVE audience as well given the amount of consoles that are going to be sold between now and the end of 2007.
SM: And generally for Xbox 360 we are broadening our appeal. We've got a lot of great games that appeal to the younger audience, to kids, to girls, women as well as blokes and their mates as well as the hardcore gamer. I think this is part of our play to showcase that we've got something for everyone.
VideoGamer.com: Movies to rent for now. Any plans to allow gamers to buy films outright?
RB: No plans. No plans. The research that we have showed that our audience is an audience that wants to rent movies through their Xbox 360.
SM: And if you want to buy something a lot of people want to buy it on DVD and have the physical media right now. That's a market that's very healthy and will continue to be so.
RB: Obviously we provide an HD-DVD accessory that plays to that market and continues to buy the HD format.
VideoGamer.com: Is there any potential confusion from a customer point of view - on the one hand you have a HD-DVD player and on the other you have HD downloads.
SM: I don't think so. I think it's all about consumer choice. Everything we've done with Xbox 360 from design upwards has all been about consumer choice. We purposely didn't put HD-DVD in there because for a while it's still going to be a small tiny part of overall DVD purchases. That will obviously change over time as more and more people understand what HD movies can deliver. But it's all about consumer choice. Do you want to go for your DVD, do you want to go for your HD-DVD or do you want to download them over the Internet. So it's all about your personal preference, what suits you and what suits your pocket.
VideoGamer.com: Are there any plans to perhaps make the HD-DVD add-on cheaper?
SM: Recently it's come down in price quite considerably over here. Something that we're running at the moment and will continue for a while yet is giving people five movies when they buy the HD-DVD. So you buy the HD-DVD, fill in a form on Xbox.com and us and our partners will send them five HD-DVDs of their choice. So I think what you're seeing is some aggressive action from us and our partners to promote it and I don't see that changing.
VideoGamer.com: Might we be seeing TV series?
SM: There's TV they do in the US. We've done bits of TV, things like South Park. They've got TV and movies, we've got a lot of music videos and movies. Something Robin and the team have been working on for a long time is getting some great music videos up there and you'll see that to be a continuing focus for us. We're focused on movies and then music.
VideoGamer.com: Is signing TV series in the UK a problem?
SM: No it's not a problem. It's just making sure that we don't try and throw everything at this service from day one. We'll continue to build up. We've got two partners across Europe, one in the UK and Ireland, for today. You'll see us announce more and more stuff over the weeks and months. But we've got a great line-up for today's launch. We're going from 27 to more than 40 by the end of this year. Warner has such a great portfolio of new releases and a tremendous back catalogue. They're a perfect partner to launch with.
VideoGamer.com: A lot of ISPs have download limits for some of their broadband packages. Is that a concern?
RB: We do work with and continue to work with all the ISPs. We are working with them to look at what is the ideal service proposition that we can make to the consumer. We've done a number of activities with BT and Virgin Media most notably over the course of the last couple of years where we've worked with them to bring the opportunity to get XBL on an even more affordable if not free situation on the back of the appropriate broadband deal with those partners. As this service becomes more and more popular we will be working with the ISPs to say right what is the ultimate package that you can have for DLC and making sure you get great XBL gaming as well.
SM: These guys are experts in their field. They're seeing more and more content being available for download, they're seeing consumer appetite growing for that type of content so they're fully behind all this stuff.
VideoGamer.com: With larger downloads with movies, could this pave the way for larger XBL Arcade titles?
SM: It's a separate service. We've just surpassed 100 Live Arcade games, they're more snack-sized type games. We increased the limit recently, we had a lot of developer feedback saying in order to get their vision out on snack-sized gaming we need to make it bigger, we did that for them. We just recently launched Xbox Originals last week in the recent dashboard update and that's going tremendously. So it's different.
VideoGamer.com: On a different note - what did you think of Michael Bay's recent comments on the HD-DVD VS Blu-ray debate and Microsoft's involvement in that?
SM: I didn't read them. I hard of them. Everyone's allowed their opinion. I think it goes back to the first point I made, it's all about choice. We're fully behind the HD-DVD as a platform. We do the HD-DVD add-on for people who want to do that. We don't burden the rest of the people who don't want that yet, the cost of having to have that, unlike some other console manufacturers. You know a lot of people are still happy with DVD. I think once they start seeing what HD can do, once they start getting the TVs that warrant HD content, I think it's a no brainer. So, his comments are his comments, but we love consumer choice.
VideoGamer.com: What was your reaction to the Activision Vivendi merger?
SM: Wow! And then I went, one of my close friends who was head of PR has just gone and joined Activision, my next thought was, is he OK? Has he still got a job? He'd just gone to the States to see his new team and stuff. I think they both have an appetite to deliver some amazing gaming experiences. I can't see that changing. The more games, the bigger games, the better games that people can experience should be a good thing.
VideoGamer.com: Thanks for your time guys.
