IndustryGamers - Informing the Games Industry

Microsoft, Rare Still Concerned About Core Gamers

Posted August 27, 2010 by M.H. Williams

At the Edinburgh Interactive Festival today Microsoft’s Xbox Live Studios head Jerry Johnson reiterated the company commitment to the hardcore gamer in the wake of their casual push with Kinect. Johnson named core gamers as the “best advocate” for the Xbox 360’s entertainment features, like Netflix, Last.fm, or the Sky Player.

"I know there's a lot of controversy over, are you turning your back on the core gamer? Are you just focused on the Wii bunch? My answer to that is an emphatic no," he said, via a report at Eurogamer.

"The reason I say that is because I realize that Live was built on the back of the core gamer. It was built to benefit the core gamer, and it was built solely focused on the core gamer when it was originally launched,” he continued. "We also know that is our best advocate to continue to grow our user base and grow the engagement with Live."

“We are still squarely focused on the core, and building mechanics that appeal to the core. But also realising that is a path to actually reach up to the broader audience."

Nick Burton, Rare’s Kinect development director, also encouraged core gamers to not feel left out during the Kinect launch. He believes there’s more for the hardcore in the peripheral than is apparent at first glance.

"All I can say to the core is go and have a go. It doesn't even have to be necessarily Kinect Sports. Go and have a go on Kinect, period," Burton told Eurogamer in an interview.

"Until people play Kinect, and they play it for more than a couple of seconds, which is unfortunately practically what you get in the trade shows... But you know hardly anybody's getting a chance to play it," he said. "It's one of those things you've got to have what I call your Kinect moment, when you realize... And we see this, we saw it at gamescom and E3, people go, 'Oh, it's way better than I expected. It's way more high fidelity than I expected.' But when you're looking at a video on the internet and you're reading the write-ups, it's very difficult to get, well I think it's probably impossible to get that feeling."

Burton expects the hardcore to really enjoy the accessory when it launches in November, even if they won’t admit it right off the bat.

"You watch the Live leaderboards when these things come out," he said. "There will be people... We'll be there going, 'How the hell have they gone that fast?' or 'How have they got that big score?' That will be the hardcore doing that."

M.H. Williams has been writing in some form or another for ten years and has been a hardcore gamer since the NES first graced American shores.  You can catch him on Twitter as @AutomaticZen, Google+ as himself, or on his personal Facebook page.