As Microsoft continues to try and get its Xbox 360 to market in China, an executive for the company outlined why Kinect may be a valuable asset in its push and how MS plans to combat piracy in the Asian country.
Simon Leung (pictured), Microsoft Corporate Vice President, Chairman and CEO for the Greater China region, speaking to the Wall Street Journal, first noted why China is such an attractive region, if it wasn’t already apparent, stating that China would soon be the world’s largest PC market, while it's already tops in the mobile phone and broadband categories.
Leung indicated that China is becoming a growing adopter of cloud computing, which could help protect Microsoft, as Leung stated, “… you cannot pirate a cloud application.”
Asked about selling consoles in China, Leung responded:
We always hope that we get the Xbox in China, period, because it is a very good product, especially with [motion-control unit] Kinect coming up. If you look at the concerns that China has, they worry about people just staying at home and not interacting and all that, and not exercising, so if you look at Kinect, it actually solves a lot of these problems…You can get good exercise out of it.
Leung was then queried on piracy for the console, specifically if Microsoft’s revenue would mainly come from the sale of hardware:
No, actually it’s from both. There are different ways to address this issue. One of the things about [online video gaming service] Xbox Live is that you need to get access to the network, and then you can go and play it, so we can do authentication. The business model will be very different from just selling software that sits on a PC.
