Harrison: Digital future is unstoppable but retail will live on

Last week was a big week for Xbox One in the UK.
Microsoft, desperate to escape the shadow of its botched Xbox One announcement, visited Eurogamer Expo to let UK consumers play its new console.
In the opening keynote, Phil Harrison, the firm’s corporate VP, confidently told fans that Xbox was ‘winning the games message’ over its rivals, pointing to its plethora of E3 awards. So confident is he in Xbox One’s success that he predicted it will last for more than ten years.
And it is confidence in the face of a resurgent PlayStation eager to claw back market share, plus the news that PC giant Steam will launch rival living room devices of its own.
MCV sat down with Harrison to talk ten-year life spans, Steam, the future of retail, and why he can’t stop talking about Titanfall.
MCV: You say Xbox One will have a life cycle longer than ten years. What makes you so confident of that?
Harrison: Well Xbox 360 has been getting close to that. When we think about an entire life of a generation, it is going to be measured in decades because of the way these devices are going to be sold around the world. We have seen that already with other consoles.
But when a cycle reaches a certain point, say five years in, we start to see a decline. Ubisoft for one doesn’t want another long console cycle.
The way in which you keep the market fresh is keep the technology fresh and keep the development ecosystem growing so that new and exciting experiences are coming out. And with Xbox One using the power of cloud we can add features, we can add functionality, we can have performance increases over time. I think that will keep the platform very fresh over a long period of time.

"On a macro-global scale, the world is clearly moving
in a digital direction. It is, I think, an unstoppable,
inexorable momentum. We are going to see the world
be truly digital. But with Xbox One we quite correctly
give people choice. They can consume and play
games on disc, and get all the benefits of that. Or
they can consume games digitally. Remember our
games will launch day-and-date on both digital and
physical, so it’s up to the user to choose which medium
they want and have the benefits of either method."

Phil Harrison - Corporate VP, Microsoft

Before you joined Xbox, I recall a talk you did called 'Daddy, What's a Disc' at the London Games Conference. It was about the move to digital and the death of physical. So were you surprised when fans reacted negatively to the digital plans you had for Xbox One?
On a macro-global scale, the world is clearly moving in a digital direction. It is, I think, an unstoppable, inexorable momentum. We are going to see the world be truly digital. But with Xbox One we quite correctly give people choice. They can consume and play games on disc, and get all the benefits of that. Or they can consume games digitally. Remember our games will launch day-and-date on both digital and physical, so it’s up to the user to choose which medium they want and have the benefits of either method.
Sony have been offering day-and-date on digital releases for a while, even Nintendo does it. What's taken Microsoft so long?
There are certain technical reasons and policy reasons for it. But we've made it a clear statement for Xbox One that we will be day-and-date for digital and retail platforms.
How do physical retailers survive in your digital world?
I think if the medium is shifting that does not mean the business model has to shift. From research we have done, consumers like to buy things from retail stores. What they might be buying is a time card or a store value card. Retailers have a very important part to play in the future of the ecosystem, but what they merchandise might shift slightly.
In May it was mentioned that your cloud service would be integrated into retail systems. That excited me, because I saw a future where stores could sell a digital game, and have that title sent directly to a customer's Xbox One, where it could be downloaded before he or she gets home. Is that the vision? Or am I getting ahead of myself?
I don’t think you are getting ahead of yourself. I am not going to make any specific promises about what technology solutions will or won't be available. The idea of a console that is connected to your network means that it can update itself. It can check in with the internet, the cloud, and download content while you sleep. So that when you wake up, there’s something new to play. So it’s certainly a possibility.

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