GAMES09: Interview with Robert Dekker, Microsoft
We talk to Robert Dekker of Microsoft about GAMES 09, the Middle East and Project Natal.
We managed to sneak away from an onslaught of presentations on the trade day of GAMES 09 to have a chat with Robert Dekker, E&D Marketing Manager, EMEA of Microsoft’s Xbox division. Clearly, he has a lot to be excited about — Microsoft has some great games releasing this year and they’ve got an ace of spades in their hand in the form of Project Natal.
MEGamers: The buzzword at E3 and now at GAMES09 was Project Natal – what made Microsoft decide to move to a different control scheme for the 360?
Robert: I don’t think that Natal is a replacement for the standard Xbox controller, but rather an extension of the existing platform. Gamers will always want to play with a standard controller for games such as first person shooters, where accuracy is key. What we wanted to do with Natal is to make gaming more accessible and more intuitive, so that people who were previously put off by the number of buttons on a regular controller could just start up a game and learn how to use their entire body to play it.
How do you think regular games will react when Natal is released?
What Natal will do is turn a normal social game into something much more interactive and physical. Natal will immerse gamers into a game at a level that has never been reached before, and it’s something that is really exciting to look forward to. For anyone who’s never picked up a video game before, this will be the best opportunity to find out what they’ve been missing out on, and I think regular gamers will appreciate the new dimension that Natal adds to their games.
Robbert Dekker, Microsoft.
You announced a price drop in the “Classics” line-up of Xbox games – can we expect any more games to join the collection?
The “Classics” line-up is for anyone who’s never owned or played any of the Xbox’s hit titles, and we are constantly talking to developers to add more games to this line-up. If you always thought “that games is too expensive to get”, now there’s no excuse!
What is your take on the gaming market here in the Middle East?
I think the region has tremendous potential to grow – we’ve seen great results in the UAE for 2009 so far, and our recent operations in Saudi Arabia have also taken off very well. There is such a passion for gaming in this region, and we are only just beginning to tap into it – if don’t correctly, game studios can establish a massive gamer base in this region, especially in the online community.
Speaking of online, a lot of gamers in the UAE use Xbox Live, even though it’s not officially supported in the region.
We recognize that there are many expats in the region, who bring their consoles over to the UAE, and thus still operate their Live accounts here. That being said, there are still a number of technical things that have to be sorted out before we can fully support Xbox Live from the region – we have to ensure that when we do launch Live in the region, it’s on par with what people expect from us. For the moment we’re still looking into it, but we will definitely let you know when we’re ready to officially launch Xbox Live here.
This is the second year you’re supporting GAMES – what are you looking to get out of GAMES09?
If you think about GAMES 09 as a consumer event, we want to promote console gaming in general, and just highlight the portfolio of games available, as well as future titles and innovations. From a company perspective, it’s a signal to the markets in general to say that this is an event that is getting attention and has some big players behind it – hopefully future shows will extend to other regions as well and really put the region on the map.
And if XBL finally launches over here, will we be able to move our accounts to the middle eastern servers? Knowing the greedy bastards at Microsoft, we’ll have to register AGAIN. and that means we’ll have to purchase what we had on the previous account again.