According to Variety, Bach said that the pricing will start high and decrease over time. “Relative to Natal,” said Bach, “we’ll see how the pricing cost works out. But people should except that it will go through the usual price curve.”

The tech was first demoed at E3 in Los Angeles earlier this year. Microsoft seems to be approaching Project Natal as its own platform, and not simply a peripheral. When asked when Project Natal will no longer be referred to by its code name “Natal”, Bach replied, “When we tell you to call it something else.”

Oh.

Elsewhere during the event, Bach discussed mobile gaming, possibly feeding the flames of those waiting for a portable Xbox gaming device. According to Bach, “The portable market is important.” He’s right, it is. But important enough for Microsoft to launch its own platform? Continuing, Bach stated, “So in the gaming space, you need to make a fork in the road decision on whether you’re going to do a portable device or focus on phones. The way technology is advancing with phones, [they are] going to be a very strong platform. The only think holding it back today is battery life.”

[Variety]

After the first-generation came and went in a relative blink of an eye, Microsoft’s Robbie Bach says that the company isn’t in quite as much of a hurry to upgrade the Xbox 360.

Speaking to The Mercury News, Bach explains that in today’s economy especially, persuading consumers to upgrade is becoming more and more difficult, especially with the quality of graphics on today’s consoles.

“Just coming up with something that’s faster and prettier isn’t going to be sufficient,” said Bach, 47. “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.”

I suppose the only question remains is which generations is he talking about here? The nearly ten-year Atari 2600 generation? The seven-year reign of the original NES? I’m pretty sure the current crop can last the latter, but the former might just be pushing it a bit too far. Longer development times will certainly contribute, but can consumers really wait nearly a decade for the next big thing?

Microsoft in no hurry to upgrade Xbox [The Mercury News via Edge]

Blu-ray won the format war. One HD game console (the PS3) already uses the format. The other one (the Xbox 360) doesn’t. Microsoft says it plans to keep it that way.

We’ve heard this before. Microsoft isn’t going Blu-ray. Still, Robbie Bach, president of Microsoft’s Entertainment & Devices Division, lays out three years why the company isn’t keen on the format:

It’s not a feature we get a ton of requests for. We really don’t. When you ask people the list of things they want to see us spending time creating in Xbox, Blu-ray is way, way down on the list.

The second thing is, from a technical perspective, it doesn’t help us in the core of what Xbox does, which is in gaming. We can’t have publishers produce games on Blu-ray disc. Because then they won’t play on the 28 million Xboxes we’ve already shipped. So it doesn’t help us in the core gaming space.

The third thing, and this maps to all three of those, is that it costs a lot of money. And so the scenario is, OK, let me get this straight: I’m going to add something to the product that’s going to raise the cost, which means the price goes up, consumers aren’t asking for it, and by the way, my game developers can’t use it.

If HD DVD had won the format war, would Microsoft be singing this song?

Q&A: Microsoft’s Robbie Bach on economy, Zune glitch and iPhone [TechFlash via VG247]

We have not seen, on the consumer side of our business, a slowdown.

Guess that explains those studio closings, huh.

Microsoft Xbox unit sees no consumer slowdown-exec [Guardian via Xboxer]

“Everyone thinks we are a software company”, said Bach. “That’s true. But, we have been in the hardware market for 26 years now. Games and phones, we have only been in these markets for a short time but we are seeing great success”.

Microsoft makes phones? Perhaps the great success lies in keeping me completely unaware of this! Bach spent some time during the conference talking up upcoming Zune features, such as the ability to play games, which I am almost positive will justify my Zune purchase whenever the choose to get around to adding that. Hey, did you hear the new models are hitting next week, allowing you to download songs directly from the Zune? Picking up the new iPod Touch instead? Just checking.

Game on, says computer giant [Alberni Valley Times]

He tells VentureBeat’s Dean Takahashi of the 360’s notoriously faulty hardware “In the ordinary course of something like this, you would expect it to show up in the customer reaction data. We just haven’t seen that. It speaks to the fact that they love their games and Xbox Live”. Bach says customers “know we’re taking care of them”, a response that breeds “respect”.

Bach also talked about the next generation of Xbox.

“Our view is we will be selling Xbox 360 for a long time”, he tells Takahashi, possibly hinting that it won’t be as quick to beat Sony and Nintendo the jump next round. Bach says that next gen planning began before the 360 shipped, but is vague on details.

He’s particularly cryptic on the active development of the next Xbox, saying of the next-gen development team “On the one hand, it’s everybody. On the other, it’s nobody”. That might be the best non-answer we’ve ever seen.

The Entertainment & Devices Division boss does an impressive job of dodging and being non-committal throughout the interview. For anyone aspiring to work at the executive level, it’s a fantastic primer on how to answer tough questions. Do check it out.

Interview with Microsoft’s Robbie Bach, part 2, on Xbox 360 [VentureBeat]

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.

Robbie Bach, (re-?) growing a pair. Better late than never!

Interview with Microsoft’s Robbie Bach, part 1, on Zune [VentureBeat]

“That’s the first time we’ve been able to say that”, Bach, chief of Microsoft’s entertainment and devices division, told the San Jose Mercury News”. That’s total Xbox business — service, software and hardware.”

Well, they’ve got a two-quarter head start toward that bold proclamation. It probably takes some sting out of the depressing sales numbers over in Europe, where an analyst warns that that weak sales there could see the 360 de-listed by retailers in some territory. Some more outtakes from a chat he had with the Merc are after the jump.

Not sure exactly what he means by “positive” and “negative” here but this is interesting:

“Recognise that for us, the fact that ‘Grand Theft Auto’ was a positive event for us is an amazing statement. Because if you think back to last generation, anything associated with ‘Grand Theft Auto’ was bad and was PlayStation. And so the idea that we’ve been able to build an ecosystem and an experience that attracts people who have never thought of being on our platform before is a pretty powerful statement.”

Is he talking about bad publicity for a violent video game? Is he talking about San Andreas, the last game, or anything from GTA:III forward?

And on that score, he talks about attracting people “who have never been on our platform before”. Yet in the same discussion, says:

In the US, there wasn’t much pop for anybody on hardware, and there are a number of things I can point out: First of all, I think both in Europe and the U.S., the idea that there’d be pop right away was probably a fallacy to begin with, because you’re going to sell to the installed base first anyway. They’re the people who pre-reserved, so the first wave of customers are going to be people who already have a console, whether it’s a PS3 or an Xbox.

So which is it?

That puts Microsoft’s E&DD team up over a half-billion for fiscal year 2008, which, if they continue to perform positively, will go a long to proving Robbie Bach right about profitability. Hey, they might not be Nintendo numbers, but it’s a step in the right direction.

Do I hear some of you chanting three-peat(TM)?

Microsoft Reports Record Second Quarter Results [Microsoft]

“Well! There you go, prophetic,” Bach said enthusiastically. “In fact it has been a role reversal. We were on first this time like they were last time, we had a product that was more price-competitive this time, and we had a higher attach rate.”

Of course we know the battle has just begun, but let Bach have his past tense for now, and perhaps we’ll revisit this post four years down the line to poke fun at it.

The article goes into a great deal of specifics as far as the profitability of his division within Microsoft versus the much more profitable software division, citing that Halo releases have been the only time the E&D group have actually posted profits, but Bach is keeping his eyes firmly on the long term.

Towards the end of the article, Edmonton Journal writer Steve Makris ponders the possibility of a Microsoft handheld gaming device sometime in the near future.

“We don’t talk about what we are doing, but generally when I look at the hand-held space, we haven’t seen anything there that says, ‘gosh, we wanna go make a big investment there.’ It’s a fairly tough area, a place where Sony and particularly Nintendo are doing a pretty good job.”

Mmhmm. That’s what everyone thought about the console market Robbie, and look at where the Xbox 360 is now. Come on, make a handheld. Everybody’s doing it.

Thinking inside the Xbox [Edmonton Journal]