Gates ready to out-box games kings

By PETER GRIFFIN

REDMOND - With its 30,000 employees, vast network of buildings and own roading and telecommunications infrastructure, Microsoft's headquarters in Redmond, Washington, is larger and better organised than some New Zealand cities.

The central hub of the software empire nurtured to life in Bill Gates' garage has become second home to a group of Kiwis - plucked from the ranks of Microsoft New Zealand to fill important positions across the Pacific at head office.

Among them is South African-born Peter Kingsley. Of the New Zealand contingent at Redmond, his job is perhaps the most fun.

As international product manager for Xbox, Microsoft's much-awaited games console, Mr Kingsley will play a crucial role in aligning Microsoft alongside Sony and Nintendo as a credible player in the console market.

"The plan is not to go head to head with PlayStation," says Mr Kingsley of main competitor Sony.

Having spent just under five years working for Sony, Mr Kingsley should have a good idea of the huge competitor's strengths - and weaknesses.

"Sony really did revolutionise the area of console games. What PlayStation did to enter and then dominate that category, we'll do to the whole console market again with Xbox," he says.

To do that Microsoft's games division has been hard at work. Already successful in the PC games market with titles such as Flight Simulator and Age of Empires, a catalogue of around 20 games is planned for release on the Xbox platform this year.

Like Sony, it is the youth market that Microsoft is eyeing. Recently the company has sealed marketing partnerships with hip shoe label Vans, the popular Taco Bell fast-food chain and SoBe drinks.

Microsoft hopes to sell 1.5 million Xbox consoles in the US between the console's November 8 launch and the year's end.

Mr Kingsley says the long-term aim is to sell 20 million to 50 million Machines globally. Preparing for that will involve travelling from Europe to Asia to the South Pacific, meeting with on-the-ground Microsoft staff and the company's thousands of channel and retail partners.

"I'm travelling generally one month in every three. We all live on e-mail at Microsoft, it's the only way," he says.

Xbox will involve a marketing push on a vast scale, with Microsoft's marketing budget for it rumoured to be around $US500 million ($1.2 billion).

But despite the scale of the venture, Mr Kingsley - who describes himself as a "sounding board and sanity check" for the rest of the Xbox team, is genuinely excited about the box he will soon be pushing worldwide in earnest.

He tells the story of Xbox's unveiling at the Safeco Stadium in Seattle, where thousands of excited Microsoft employees piled in to see Xbox creator Seamus Blackley play the game version of the blockbuster movie Shrek. They were sold.

But like in the late eighties "videotape wars" between VHS and BetaMax, Microsoft faces a formidable competitor in Sony, which has released some of the most successful console games.

Here Mr Kingsley turns a tech-sector marketing cliche on its head.

"At the end of the day, content isn't always king. The processing power of Xbox really is unbelievable. Just look at how the specifications compare with PlayStation 2."

The features of Xbox are impressive. It will have greater processing power than the PlayStation 2 and introduce to consoles for the first time a computer hard drive, allowing easy storage.

Importantly, Xbox will also have in-built internet access, allowing gaming with others via the web, giving it the edge over PlayStation 2 and Nintendo's coming release, GameCube. All that and more for $US299, the same price as PlayStation 2 and similar to competing models.

Similarly seductive products are the domain of Wellingtonian Craig Dewar, who arrived in Redmond at the beginning of the year to assume the role of marketing manager at Microsoft's Mobility Division.

Mr Dewar's windowless office is full of mobile gadgets. Some, like the "Stinger" Smartphone, have been developed in Microsoft's research labs and hint at the convenience mobile devices will soon provide.

Top of the agenda for Mr Dewar at the moment is Pocket PC 2002, Microsoft's new software platform for handheld computers that will allow users to replicate many of the functions available on their desktop PCs on devices they can carry in their pockets.

Set for release early next month, Pocket PC 2002 is expected to challenge the dominance of handheld software manufacturer Palm, which has been losing ground to Compaq's handheld Ipaq, running on the Pocket PC platform.