Stephen McGill Interview

With the busy Christmas period well and truly upon us, the console war is in full swing. Last week we brought you an exclusive interview with Sony Computer Entertainment UK managing director Ray Maguire, where we quizzed him on everything PS3. Now, we bring you an exclusive interview with Microsoft’s UK head of gaming and entertainment, Stephen McGill, where he dishes the dirt on the GTA 4 DLC, tells us why there won’t be a console price cut for years and hints at a surprising 2009 for 360 owners.

VideoGamer.com: Tell us a bit about the work you do.

Stephen McGill: I head up the Entertainment Gaming team. We’re responsible for bringing the marketing for the console, the platform, for Xbox LIVE, for all the individual titles, such as Gears of War, or Lips, to life here in the UK and Ireland. Basically I work with the PR team closely, do the advertising, work with sales guys to look at how many consoles we can ship this week, or how many units of Gears of War should we have ready for launch and make sure the manufacturing team are busy working their socks off 24 hours a day getting all the product ready and getting it in the right place. It’s a busy time. We’ve got a stack of games sitting on our desks that we’re just desperate to get involved in and start playing. There’s just so many great games coming out and not enough hours in the day.

VideoGamer.com: This time last year was incredible for new releases.

SM: It was the golden age of gaming last year!

VideoGamer.com: Is it better this year?

SM:Yeah! Absolutely. A year and a bit ago, September 27, we launched Halo 3, and we were thinking Halo 3, amazing, and we had a great line-up of games from us and third parties on Xbox 360 last Christmas. It’s even better this year. I mean we’ve got Gears of War next week, we’ve just had Fable straight in at the charts at number one, and there’s just so much more coming from us, because we’ve got the New Xbox Experience on November 19, and there’s just masses of great games from third parties as well on our platform.

The good thing this year is there’s just something for everyone. From a core gamer point of view I don’t think anyone’s got any doubts or concerns that we’re not servicing the needs of the core gamer. That’s how Xbox has grown up to be successful. But we do have an appetite to broaden our audience and so we’ve got a lot of focus on that stuff too. In my head it’s a philosophy of AND. We want to have great games for gamers AND we want great games and entertainment experiences that are going to broaden our audience. Things like Lips and Scene It?, NXE, can help us do all that.

VideoGamer.com: How’s the Xbox 360 doing in the UK in terms of sales?

SM: Really well. We are tracking fantastically well. The thing that we’ve just obviously had is the price drop, and we were able to do that because we’ve got such great momentum and so therefore we’re manufacturing a lot and that gets the costs down and so we’re able to pass that straight on to consumers, which I think is brilliant because obviously money is getting tighter and tighter, giving the current climate out there. Staying in is the new going out, so we want to make sure that we’re affordable as much as possible. I think we’ve obviously got three consoles to choose from, so whichever your price point, whatever experience you’re looking for, I think we’ve got something from a console point of view. Obviously with Xbox LIVE, pretty important for whoever you are, core gamer or broader, and we’ve got a brilliant portfolio, so, yeah, we’re very happy with where we are.

VideoGamer.com: The Xbox 360 seems ridiculously cheap at the moment.

SM: It’s great value. It really is great value, absolutely.

VideoGamer.com: Is that as cheap as it can get in the UK?

SM: I’m not going to speculate where it might go in five or ten years time, whatever. But we’ve obviously just reduced the price and that’s because we can pass the costs reductions we have straight on to consumers. Again that’s the right thing to do, obviously from a business point of view it helps it sell even more. I think a lot of people have been waiting for it to become even more affordable and they’re now seeing that benefit and buying it in their droves and we can now hopefully continue it through Christmas and beyond.

It’s great value. And I think the value not only comes from the price of the console but the content. With NXE launching and obviously that’s free for everyone, and the portfolio. There isn’t a better range of games and entertainment, basically fun, on any other platforms, and we’re incredibly affordable.

VideoGamer.com: So it’s unlikely there will be another price drop for a good while yet?

SM: Yeah. I mean absolutely. We’re a great price now. I’m not dropping the price for many many years in the future I would suspect.

VideoGamer.com: Gears of War 2 is going to be a massive game obviously. Is it the Xbox 360’s premier title now? Has it usurped Halo’s throne?

SM: I don’t think anything needs to have its own… nothing needs to usurp Halo. Halo was the title that Xbox launched with and set the expectations of what we as a company could deliver so I think that’s always going to have a special place in people’s hearts, our own included. But I think it’s a case of you can have multiple games sitting on that top spot. And that goes in waves, so obviously we’ve got a couple of Halo franchise games coming out that we’ve talked about, Halo Wars and Halo 3: Recon. It’s Gears of War’s and Marcus Fenix’s turn now. So I don’t think it has to be an either/or situation. But implying that Gears of War is a pretty big game, both in terms of sales opportunity and expectations, as well as just the experience of what entertainment can be in 2008 and 2009, I think it’s a great signal of what gaming on Xbox 360 is about.

VideoGamer.com: The important Christmas period is in full swing now and most 360 owners are aware of the titles you’ve got coming out. Looking to the future, next year what are the games you are excited about that will be exclusive on the Xbox 360?

SM: Well I know a lot of the games coming out from us and our third parties. Most of them, in fact, have not been announced because everyone’s very focused on what’s out for Christmas. So it would do our third party partners a disservice for me to announce their great line-ups before they’re ready to. So obviously we’ve announced things like Halo Wars coming out in the Spring, Halo 3: Recon later next year, Resi Evil 5 is coming to the platform, really excited about that. So I think we’re very focused on what’s coming out for Christmas, we’ve talked about things coming out early next year. Very soon at some point we’ll have the exclusive content for Grand Theft Auto on Xbox 360. So there’s lots of great stuff coming in 2009 that people know about. Lots more, I’m sure that they don’t know about.

VideoGamer.com: So there’s lots of surprises in store for Xbox 360 owners?

SM: You could expect that, yeah absolutely.

VideoGamer.com: You mentioned the GTA DLC. There seems to be some confusion about when exactly it’s coming out. You guys are saying it’s this year, Rockstar maybe a little different. Could you clear that up for our readers?

SM: Rockstar I think have said it’s in their next quarter, which runs from November to end of January. It’s obviously Rockstar’s product so I will refer you to them to find out when they’re ready to start talking more about it. I obviously know, I’m very excited. So, yeah. Talk to them.

VideoGamer.com: You know when it’s coming out so I assume you know something else about it. Is it going to be amazing? Is it going to blow GTA 4 fans away? Can you give the fans anything to get them excited?

SM: What little I know I can’t even share with you or your readers. I’m very happy, so that’s all I’m going to say. Rockstar are amazing developers, GTA is an amazing franchise. I think they’ll do their franchise proud.

VideoGamer.com: Regarding the titles that you’ve got coming out this Christmas, it’s clear that there is a degree of focus on the more causal audience that perhaps the 360 isn’t traditionally known for targeting, with Lips, You’re in the Movies, Scene It? and the NXE is very much about making the 360 easier to use. What was the thinking behind this push towards the more casual area? When did those thought processes start happening in Microsoft?

SM: The happening happened long before we launched Xbox 360. We’re on our journey, there’s certain things you can do in the first year you launch a platform, there’s stuff you add to in the second year. And as you’ve been out for longer and the price comes down you can start talking to an increased and a different audience. So it’s nothing new in our heads. We’ve been doing causal games or broader appeal games for a little while now. I think we’re seeing a big focus on that. But what I would remind you though is it’s not an either/or situation. We’re very focused on delivering amazing games for gamers as well as looking at how we broaden our audience both with what we do on Xbox LIVE and with snack sized games with things like Arcade, or product you buy at retail, things like Scene It?, You’re in the Movies or Guitar Hero. It’s about party games, it’s about fun games with your friends and family – if you’ve got kids, being able to play games alongside your kids. Something like LEGO Batman is just amazing because it’s a great family friendly game, but for me as a hardcore gamer I love it because it’s an amazing experience. And it’s a game I can play several times because I’m a Gamerscore whore and I like my points. It’s a case of talking to all your audiences as we get to great value price points and have great content coming out from us and our third parties.

VideoGamer.com: So there’s no chance of Microsoft doing a Nintendo and leaving hardcore gamers behind?

SM: Nintendo’s strategy is Nintendo’s strategy and if you want an opinion on that strategy that’s for them to talk about. For us, we’re focused on what we think is important for our business and servicing the needs of core gamers and broadening out to games that appeal to your girlfriend, your wife, your sister, whoever is important to you and your family, your mates on a Friday night with a couple of beers. We want to have something for everybody and I think we’re the only platform that offers that, have offered it for a while and continue to offer that breadth of experience, whether it’s movies or games or general snack sized fun. I think we’re the only platform that offers that.

VideoGamer.com: Thanks for your time.

The New Xbox Experience will be a free update for your Xbox 360 on November 19.