If you’ve ever wondered why Microsoft hasn’t tried to enter the mobile gaming device market, Dennis Durkin, COO of the Xbox division at Microsoft, makes it very clear that the company has very little optimism for that market in general. Commenting on Sony’s upcoming release of the PSP Vita, he said,
"I’m not sure I would want to be launching a dedicated portable device right now into that market. I think the DS - if you look at the 3DS, certainly versus people’s expectation"s it’s not been as successful as people would have thought. So that’s a very crowded market and a very, very red ocean right now with a lot of change happening. So I’m not sure it"s [a good idea]. You only have a certain number of bets you can make as a company and you have to decide what you want to put your wood behind and I’m just not sure that that’s a place that I would put mine."
His words to Industry Gamers are pointed at Sony’s seeming lack of focus when it comes to gaming. Their wide stabs into the mobile, 3D, motion control, and multimedia technologies are seen as somewhat of a shotgun approach for strategy makers at Microsoft. Instead, the Xbox team would rather focus on the things they have already established dominance in, like Xbox live, and continue to incrementally improve those aspects instead of constantly branching out.
In fact, its entire mobile gaming strategy with Windows Phone 7 pretty much relies on Xbox Live integration for basic functionality. However, Kinect was the first time Xbox really did something genuinely new and unprecedented with the console, and considering the success that brought to the team, don’t be surprised if we see a little more confidence in new concepts for the Xbox 360 console.