SharkJumping

The NYT ran an article this week laying out some of the details behind Microsoft's upcoming marketing campaign for XBox 360 - this is probably the best quote - The point, said Bill Nielsen, who oversees marketing for the Xbox 360, is to help a game player convince the women in the family that "this is for you, too, not just for me to play Madden,' " (my underlining)

This approach is certainly a bold one since it goes against the entire history of successful game console launches, and has certainly amused the industry veterans I have spoken with about it.  This broad technology (MP3 player, digital photos, makes toast, etc.) and broad demographic (men, women, teens, left-handed Eskimos, etc) push feels very much like the initial launch of the Philips CD-i system in the early 90's, which promised everything to everyone, but was then crushed by game-focused competitors - it's such a seminal lesson that there are even multiple marketing case studies which reference it.

This approach makes little sense for the initial launch since there won't be enough units to go around anyway, at least for the first 12 months, even if Microsoft hits its production goals - all of the production will be purchased by early adopter core gamers who have no need to ask their mother if they can buy the machine.  The danger of this approach is that PS3 will appear 9-12 months later with a presumably much more focused game approach, a more powerful piece of hardware in every way (including Blu-Ray DVD), and what will probably be a better suite of killer games than XBox 360 since the developers will have had more time to create them, in spite of a more difficult PS3 architecture.  On the other hand, if MS is privately admitting that it won't have enough dominant games around launch, then this may be a focus out of necessity rather than desire, or if they believe that they have no chance of winning the core market, then they should start out with a broader brand approach - either one is not a great sign.

The online components of XBox will probably be significantly more advanced than those on the PS3 based on the relative strengths of the two companies.  Rather than focus on how many casual games your grandmother can play on the Xbox 360, MS should nail down the brand as the key place to play core online games, and then expand the demographic later as competition appears.   They have the market to themselves for a year, and pitching Xbox 360 as a Swiss Army Knife for the whole family would seem to be a strange way to cement their brand.  On the other hand, I and most of my friends have already shelled out hundreds of dollars to get one upon launch, so it may not matter in the end.