While we may be nervous about Microsoft's Project Natal branding strategy -- remember, that's just a codename -- the suits in Redmond share no such concern. That's because the Natal project is following Nintendo's lead in more ways than just easy-to-play, motion-based technology. It's also following Nintendo's branding strategy.

On May 11, 2004 Nintendo president Satoru Iwata announced the "Nintendo Revolution" to the E3 audience and, while he didn't show off the motion-based controller (we wouldn't see that for another sixteen months, at TGS 2005), he did promise "an unprecedented gameplay experience." The Revolution would offer "something no other machine has delivered before." The following May, over two years after first announcing the "Revolution," Nintendo revealed the product's final name just before E3: Wii.

When we asked Microsoft's Robbie Bach, "When can we stop calling it Natal?" at a recent Open House event, the exec wasn't shy about comparing the company's strategy to Nintendo's. "When Nintendo came out with the name 'Wii,' people sort of said 'Oh gosh, that's kind of a goofy, weird name.' I haven't heard a comment about it being a goofy name since the week after they announced the name," Bach said. "And suddenly, people just called it the 'Wii' and moved on." And, specifically, they've moved on to buying them en masse.

When questioned about the possibility of a dedicated gaming handheld vs a phone with multimedia functionality, Microsoft's Robbie Bach expressed his hesitation to enter either market to attendees of yesterday's.First Annual Microsoft Open House. The Entertainment and Devices division prez said, "The portable market's an interesting market ... you have to decide which direction the market is going." Rather than pursue the phone with gaming/media functionality route that Apple has taken, Bach thinks current technology simply isn't good enough yet.

"You have to decide if the dedicated devices in the portable market are going to continue to grow, or whether the phone that you get is going to get powerful enough and battery power management is going to get good enough that people are going to look at it and say 'No, I just want one device that's going to have some games on it, some music on it, some video on it.' I'm probably more biased to think that's the direction where the market is going."

Though he didn't mention an iPhone competitor or a dedicated gaming device, Bach hinted at the possibility, saying the Xbox and Zune are integrating at "a steady drumbeat." That steady drumbeat likely won't lead to much in the coming months though, as he noted, "There is a CES two years from now where people will look back and say 'Wow! Look at everything they did.'" At that point we'll only be four years from flying cars and hoverboards, so let's hope that Microsoft has some serious future stuff up its sleeves.

Speaking at the First Annual Microsoft Open House in Manhattan yesterday, E&D Division prez Robbie Bach danced around the issue of pricing the company's upcoming motion tech for Xbox 360. "Relative to Natal, we'll see how the pricing/costs work out," Bach said. "But I think people should expect it to be like other things: We work through the price curve, just like we have with other products."

Though muddled, Bach's comment does not suggest that Natal will hit retail costing an arm and a leg (geddit?), but rather the device's launch price will be set high enough for significant discounts to go into effect over time. Using Wii as the bad example, Bach emphasized that Nintendo's launch price and its new discounted price aren't notably different. "When you start at $249, I don't know that a [price drop to] $199 -- I don't know how much difference that's going to make in the marketplace," Bach observed. "We'll see."

Speaking at the First Annual Microsoft Open House in NYC, Robbie Bach, president of the company's entertainment and devices division, was touting the strength of the 360 platform. Along with the impressive news that the results of 425 million games had been crunched for matchmaking, Bach also said that Avatar clothing had been changed more than 150 million times. When you divide that by the 20 million Xbox Live users the company's claiming, that's ... more than 7 changes each. We're a bit worried about some of you.

Gang, please, keep your dignity intact: Set it once -- walk away. It's the only sane thing to do. Of course, Bach also said that 200,000 games of 1 vs. 100 were being played every weekend, so maybe you guys are just trying to get spiffed up for Chris Cashman. We hope it was worth it.

Speaking to Variety, Microsoft's Robbie Bach discussed Microsoft's performance during 2008, specifically on how the company plans to woo casual gamers. Bach said that "people are still buying consoles" despite the poor state of the global economy, though they may buy "a little bit fewer games." Bach stated that customers "want to be entertained even when the economy is not entertaining."

Bach also discussed how Microsoft is expanding its casual audience. Bach noted that the biggest drivers of the casual market for Microsoft are music gamee, such as Guitar Hero and Rock Band, and the new Netflix streaming application in the New Xbox Experience, which Bach says is expanding the Xbox market beyond "traditional gamers." Concerning music titles, Bach says that 60 million songs have been downloaded from Xbox Live, though we have to wonder how many of those purchases were made by casual gamers.

Other subjects touched upon in the interview include Xbox Live as a business, Kodu, and the Zune. Head over to Variety for the full interview.

"The life cycle for this generation of consoles - and I'm not just talking about Xbox, I'd include Wii and PS3 as well - is probably going to be a little longer than previous generations," admitted Bach. "Just coming up with something that's faster and prettier isn't going to be sufficient." Well said.

So, if our math skills are up to par, we'd say a new Xbox revision should be headed down the pipeline sometime in 2011. Yeah, about then, give or take a year.

[Via GamesIndustry.biz]

In order to release Xbox 360 before its competitors, Microsoft killed the original Xbox at just four years old. November 2009 marks the four year anniversary of Xbox 360, but don't expect the system to become obsolete just yet. Microsoft's Robbie Bach told the San Jose Mercury News that the current generation will last longer than before. "The life cycle for this generation of consoles -- and I'm not just talking about Xbox, I'd include Wii and PS3 as well -- is probably going to be a little longer than previous generations."

The weakening economy will most likely delay the arrival of a new generation even further. "When you look at consumers, they are going to be more value-conscious," Bach said. A next-generation console released any time soon would be prohibitively expensive and no company wants to repeat the same mistake Sony made.Perhaps the "ten year" mantra won't necessarily be a PlayStation-exclusive PR bullet point.

The surprising success of Wii will undoubtedly make Microsoft refocus their next-gen efforts. Nintendo managed to claim the top spot of the console wars, in spite of having significantly less powerful tech. "Just coming up with something that's faster and prettier isn't going to be sufficient," Bach adds.

[Via Edge]

Robbie Bach, president of Microsoft's Entertainment & Devices Division (you know, Xbox), has reiterated for the ... well, we've lost track of the amount of times he's said Blu-ray isn't coming to the Xbox 360. Just for the sake of tradition, TechFlash asked the question again and Bach balked saying, "We have no plan to do that."

When pressed, Bach, having spiritually gone to his happy place, explained it's not a feature they get "a ton" of requests for. From a technical perspective it doesn't help the Xbox and it would raise the cost of the product. Bach emphasizes that HD content is available through Netflix and the Live Marketplace. Maybe Robbie will get lucky and the Blu-ray questions will end ... yeah, no chance.

[Via CVG]

We thought Robbie Bach did a pretty good job with his portion of the CES Microsoft keynote, with the notable exception of his inability to activate his 360 controller. Maybe it was the nerves, but we could tell from the audience that he just wasn't pushing the Guide button long enough. We can't fault him too much for inexperience starting his controller -- after all, we're sure he has people for that.

Oh, a few minutes later he was beaten in a game by a little girl. Just saying.

The house Bill Gates built received its share of quizzical looks when it launched Xbox 360 a year earlier than Sony was tipped to ship PS3. Fast forward to today. If you ask MS, it's a move it'll never regret ... and intends to repeat.

Talking with VentureBeat, Xbox 360 boss Robbie Bach chatted about where the Xbox brand is headed next generation, reconfirming their plan to be the first out of the console release gate once again. "If you take the question of whether it was the right thing to try to be first [with Xbox 360], the answer to that is definitely yes" Bach told VentureBeat, "it has given us a leg up with game developers. It has given us a leg up from an economics perspective. It helped us expand Xbox Live quickly. At a strategy level, if you asked if we wanted to be first again, I would say yes." Plain and simple. Then again, trying to beat the PS4 to market won't be all that hard for Microsoft seeing that Sony has publicly announced their plans to make it a ten year console. Right? Xbox 720 in 2011, bring it on!

[Via CVG]

Microsoft is not yet ready to unveil a handheld gaming device, and it may not for quite some time looking at the performance of the PSP. While Sony has met moderate success with the PSP, it has struggled against Nintendo in the sector, and in spite of better hardware, has been unable to beat the Nintendo juggernaut.

Zune, Microsoft's current music player, can play both music and video -- but will it ever play games? Perhaps. Microsoft's Robbie Bach spoke with Dean Takahashi on VentureBeat, and had a few things to say about what they're learning from the PSP. "The PSP is a reasonably successful product at the profit-and-loss level. But as a product concept, there are cautionary tales to learn from it. While it is good at producing audio, it's not a good music player because it doesn't have local storage (except for flash memory slots). You can't keep your music there. It has a beautiful screen, but you can only get the video under the Universal Media Disc format. That format hasn't been successful. On a game level, it has done well. But even there, it is mostly PlayStation 2 ports. There isn't much original content."

Bach's comments ring of some truth, but they seem to based on the image set by Sony during the PSP launch. Since then, PSP can run full-resolution video off Memory Stick (although there are still a number of arbitrary restrictions on video playback). PSP has gained a number of original non-ported games, but it must still fend off the image that it doesn't have original content. "When you do these devices, they can't be pretty good at a lot of things. They need to be great at what they do. Zune is a great music player. We have local storage, a marketplace, the social network. We didn't do video right out of the gate because you want to do those things in a high-quality way. Same thing in the gaming space. It is technically possible to do games on there. But you aren't going to see a broad gaming effort from us until we sort that through and have it figured out."

[Via GameDaily]

Fun fact: the Xbox 360 hardware issues did not affect customers' overall view of the console. Robbie Bach, head of Microsoft's Entertainment & Devices Group, told a group of reporters, "The amazing part of that whole situation is that when we look at brand preference, customer satisfaction, willingness to recommend, none of that data has moved through that whole process" (via VentureBeat).

In case you think you misread that, Bach continues. "It speaks to the fact that they love their games and Xbox Live. Does it frustrate them? Yes. On the other hand, they know we're taking care of them," he said. Bach, who was not part of yesterday's executive reshuffle, covered quite a few topics (and managed to dodge most of them): the next Xbox console, Japan failures, a hinted Wii remote, "Wii 360" and the loss of Bizarre Creations.

9:00AM pacific has come and gone and guess what kids? We still do not have a Blu-ray equipped Xbox 360 to announce, because it isn't real. So, that CrunchGear rumor was a total bust, who would have guessed? But we really didn't have to wait until this morning to be disappointed, because Microsoft's own Robbie Bach already dispelled (for the 39th time) any Blu-ray / Xbox 360 integration yesterday during an interview with SFGate. Again, Bach pretty much reiterated the fact that the Blu-ray format isn't something Microsoft is interested in adding to the 360 and doesn't think consumers really see value in it. Oh, and if you were excited about a Zune Phone (and really, who isn't?) don't hold your breath. Bach squashed that rumor too.

[Via Engadget]

Well, it's tomorrow, and despite yesterday's rumor that Microsoft would be announcing a Blu-ray equipped Xbox 360 today (that's yesterday's tomorrow, for those of you confused by that first clause), so far we've so far heard bupkis. In fact, we've heard less than bupkis if you take into account the San Francisco Chronicle interview with Robbie Bach, in which the Microsoft Entertainment & Devices president downplays disc-based movie formats and stresses Microsoft's HD video downloads.

"Xbox 360 has a great ability to deliver [high-definition experience] through the Xbox Live (online download) service," Bach said. "It's a great way to get the high-definition concept because it's right there. There's no additional media. There is nothing you need to purchase ... You have to look at how fundamentally compelling the difference is between a progressive scan DVD player and the picture that it can produce and what you get on a high-definition player. The reality is there is some difference, but most people look at it and say, 'I am not going to pay extra for that.'"

The full interview also includes Bach's thoughts on in-game ads, the next-next-gen Xbox, and motion-sensitive controllers. Check it out.