In between the questions and answers, Peter played a game of TT on the XBOX 360 with me and lost rather gracefully, saying he hadn't played the game for a while. Mohit kept talking about how he would beat me. With the launch in the evening and seeing how stressed he was anyway I didn't want to prove him wrong.
What Mohit knows is that the stress is just beginning. Here's why: the XBOX 360 cannot be pirated, but there have been reports that the 360's protection has been cracked. That's true for the first set of 360s that shipped with drives from a particular company.
Flashing those drives has let people run copied disks. The problem is that Microsoft can detect cracked hardware the moment you connect to XBOX Live - a whole social networking thingy that goes far beyond just letting you play a game against/with a real live opponent on the other side of the world. Half the fun of playing a game on the 360 is the Live experience.
All of this boils down to one major point: Microsoft is going to find it very hard to sell to a large market. The reason Monu and Pappu down the street buy the PS2 console is that there are tons of games that they can get for it.
With the 360, Microsoft loses money on every console sold. They make their money by selling games and the XBOX Live experience. Getting an Indian market that's grown up on pirated games to buy games will be a tough task. Getting them to pay a base price of almost Rs 20,000 for a console for which pirated games aren't available will be even harder.
So, what can Mohit and gang do?
Number One - Sell only to the next generation of the Tatas and the Birlas and Tata and Birla wannabes.
Number Two - Figure out how to work really well with law enforcement agencies to crack down on fake cds for any game console. If there is no supply of fakes, people will HAVE to buy genuine.
Number Three - Bring out an advertisement that will have kids driving their moms mad with demands for the XBOX 360. Dads will be taking a leaf out of the book written by the communist parties in India and will provide outside support.
Number Four - Encourage the development of games in India that can be given away for free on XBOX Live. So you'll have endless cartoon iterations of Ram killing Ravana and an evergreen Rajnikanth stopping bullets with his teeth (just so all demographic groups are covered).
Number Five - Wake up to the fact that dollars don't convert into good looking rupees and sell international games for less, a lot less, in India. Or better still. Stop selling games altogether. Get people to subscribe to games so they pay to play it for as long as they want.
Believe it or not, a couple of little birdies in Microsoft tell me they've done a lot of the above and thinking about the rest. But here's the one thing I believe will make all the difference: Microsoft needs to figure out how to setup 360 kiosks where kids of all ages can pay to play games.
The first game I ever played was Super Mario on a Nintendo 8 bit box hooked up to an old black and white TV at a store close to my house. While MS may only want to set up fancy air-conditioned lounges where the "XBOX experience" comes across in a user-survey friendly manner, India doesn't live next to a mall.
So, give away those 360s to stores where kids can play games at 10 rupees a pop. Make it as ubiquitous as a cola or bubblegum. And bet on simple games like Kameo or Table Tennis to drive the market. Most people want to pick up a game and have fun, not spend twenty hours learning how to play the game.
And Microsoft needs to do all of this before the Nintendo Wii arrives with games that only Nintendo knows how to make ... and at a price that is exactly half of what you'd pay for the XBOX. Unlike America, people aren't going to buy two consoles, no matter how much you may want them to. first published:September 27, 2006, 22:01 ISTlast updated:September 27, 2006, 22:01 IST
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The Indian festive season kicked off with the launch of the XBOX 360 and it's younger brother the Core. On the Big Day, Mohit Anand, the man ultimately responsible for the XBOX in India, obviously hadn't slept for a month. His boss, Peter Moore, the international boss of the XBOX, hadn't slept either thanks to the vagaries of international flights.
In between the questions and answers, Peter played a game of TT on the XBOX 360 with me and lost rather gracefully, saying he hadn't played the game for a while. Mohit kept talking about how he would beat me. With the launch in the evening and seeing how stressed he was anyway I didn't want to prove him wrong.
What Mohit knows is that the stress is just beginning. Here's why: the XBOX 360 cannot be pirated, but there have been reports that the 360's protection has been cracked. That's true for the first set of 360s that shipped with drives from a particular company.
Flashing those drives has let people run copied disks. The problem is that Microsoft can detect cracked hardware the moment you connect to XBOX Live - a whole social networking thingy that goes far beyond just letting you play a game against/with a real live opponent on the other side of the world. Half the fun of playing a game on the 360 is the Live experience.
All of this boils down to one major point: Microsoft is going to find it very hard to sell to a large market. The reason Monu and Pappu down the street buy the PS2 console is that there are tons of games that they can get for it.
With the 360, Microsoft loses money on every console sold. They make their money by selling games and the XBOX Live experience. Getting an Indian market that's grown up on pirated games to buy games will be a tough task. Getting them to pay a base price of almost Rs 20,000 for a console for which pirated games aren't available will be even harder.
So, what can Mohit and gang do?
Number One - Sell only to the next generation of the Tatas and the Birlas and Tata and Birla wannabes.
Number Two - Figure out how to work really well with law enforcement agencies to crack down on fake cds for any game console. If there is no supply of fakes, people will HAVE to buy genuine.
Number Three - Bring out an advertisement that will have kids driving their moms mad with demands for the XBOX 360. Dads will be taking a leaf out of the book written by the communist parties in India and will provide outside support.
Number Four - Encourage the development of games in India that can be given away for free on XBOX Live. So you'll have endless cartoon iterations of Ram killing Ravana and an evergreen Rajnikanth stopping bullets with his teeth (just so all demographic groups are covered).
Number Five - Wake up to the fact that dollars don't convert into good looking rupees and sell international games for less, a lot less, in India. Or better still. Stop selling games altogether. Get people to subscribe to games so they pay to play it for as long as they want.
Believe it or not, a couple of little birdies in Microsoft tell me they've done a lot of the above and thinking about the rest. But here's the one thing I believe will make all the difference: Microsoft needs to figure out how to setup 360 kiosks where kids of all ages can pay to play games.
The first game I ever played was Super Mario on a Nintendo 8 bit box hooked up to an old black and white TV at a store close to my house. While MS may only want to set up fancy air-conditioned lounges where the "XBOX experience" comes across in a user-survey friendly manner, India doesn't live next to a mall.
So, give away those 360s to stores where kids can play games at 10 rupees a pop. Make it as ubiquitous as a cola or bubblegum. And bet on simple games like Kameo or Table Tennis to drive the market. Most people want to pick up a game and have fun, not spend twenty hours learning how to play the game.
And Microsoft needs to do all of this before the Nintendo Wii arrives with games that only Nintendo knows how to make ... and at a price that is exactly half of what you'd pay for the XBOX. Unlike America, people aren't going to buy two consoles, no matter how much you may want them to.
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