How badly is game piracy affecting the Xbox 360 in India?
Piracy is a big issue for our software business, and it’s an equally big issue for our gaming business. The way the gaming business works, companies do not make money from consoles. The margins are made in software. So it’s very important for us that people buy games. If they don’t, then just selling consoles turns this into a charity business. So piracy is really, really hurting us. But the positive thing is that year after year piracy is going down.
So then do you see digital distribution via Xbox LIVE as a viable option for a country like India?
Yes, definitely. Bandwidth has been an issue, and it still is an issue. But the broadband situation is now improving, and higher bandwidth connectivity is getting cheaper. So I think the shift to downloads will happen, but gradually.
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One very worrying trend of late is that some third party distributors don’t bring in the Xbox 360 version of certain games; they’ll only bring in the PS3 version. Even Activision games for Xbox 360 no longer release in India. What do you make of this and is there something you can do to make sure that Xbox 360 owners get these games too?
I agree that this is a serious problem. Things would be a lot easier if the publishers themselves had some sort of presence in India. But we have to work with the distributors and try to find a solution for this. You happened to mention Activision; they’re actually making some of the best Kinect games, and with that happening, some of these issues will get sorted. But we do need to look at this more closely. I did have a chat with some of our partners at E3, and there’s more work to be done, but it’s certainly something that needs to be taken care of.
Can you tell us a bit about the Xbox LIVE user base in India?
I cannot share the exact numbers with you, but as a percentage of overall users, we have a very healthy percentage compared to other countries around the world. But if you ask me, we haven’t even scratched the surface. Personally, I’ve been very impatient in wanting to push LIVE, but we’ve been holding back due to the lack of broadband, etc. But I think starting this year and probably next year is when we’ll really start to see a lot of activity on Xbox LIVE.
What’s the Gold-Silver ratio like? Is there a good number of Gold subscribers here?
All I can say is yes, it’s a good number, but I can’t get into specifics. However, there have been issues; one in particular which has been concerning us. The credit card authentication that was brought in by the government has prevented people from buying subscriptions and points online. People can still buy prepaid cards at retail or via our website, but it’s still not the ideal situation, and we will rectify this situation. It will just take some time.
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There are a lot of Indian studios that are getting into game development, be it arcade titles or PSP games. Has Microsoft been in touch with any Indian developers to create games, maybe for the Xbox LIVE Arcade platform?
In terms of boxed Xbox games, yes there are games like Forza; GameShastra has done a lot of work on those games. Development happens all over the world and India is no different. In terms of creating a console game for India, the answer is no. If we create a game, it has to be high quality. Most people in India still prefer to play global titles. For Xbox LIVE Arcade, the answer is yes and no. It hasn’t been happening yet, but we have been talking to a few people who are interested in the platform, and hopefully it will happen very soon.
Anything else you’d like to say to the readers?
I’d like to clarify that there was never any lack of activity on the Xbox front. Xbox came into the Indian market with such a dhamaka that we’ve set the bar high for ourselves, and because we haven’t always maintained that high level of activity, it may have seemed like there is no activity around Xbox at all. But that really isn’t the case. We’ve been growing year-on-year. We sold more Xboxes last year than we did the year before that. We always knew that something big like what we have this year was around the corner, so we’ve been preparing for that. This is going to be a great year. In so many ways, we’re starting from scratch and redefining everything. It’s going to be very exciting.
