On stage during “The New Geography Of Gaming” panel at Web 2.0 Summit, the topic of conversation between Kleiner Perkins partner Bing Gordon, Activision’s Robert Kotick and Microsoft’s Don Mattrick focused on how amazingly engaging today’s games are. A key talking point was plastics vs. not plastics i.e controllers (or guitars in the case of Activision’s Guitar Hero) vs. the gesture and spoken command control interface of the newly launched Microsoft Kinect.
After having sold 1 million Kinects in ten days, Mattrick was feeling pretty confident about his company’s decision to cut out the plastic. When asked by Gordon how much Microsoft spent on the product before launch Mattrick jokingly stated, “It felt like in excess of a billion.”
When asked by Gordon when people should place an order for Kinect in order to secure one for the holiday season, Mattrick said, seriously, “by the end of this week” insisting that he was not just trying to spike early sales and in fact the product is in that much demand.
Microsoft, founded in 1975 by Bill Gates and Paul Allen, is a veteran software company, best known for its Microsoft Windows operating system and the Microsoft Office suite of productivity software. Starting in 1980 Microsoft formed a partnership with IBM allowing Microsoft to sell its software package with the computers IBM manufactured. Microsoft is widely used by professionals worldwide and largely dominates the American corporate market. Additionally, the company has ventured into hardware with consumer products such as the Zune and...
Activision (NASDAQ: ATVI) is an American video game developer and publisher. It was the first independent developer and distributor of video games for gaming consoles.
Bing Gordon joined Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers in 2008. At KPCB, he leads on the sFund, the investment initiative to fund and build applications and services that deliver on the promise of the social web. The sFund, launched in late 2010 with strategic partners Amazon, Facebook, Zynga, Comcast, Liberty Media and Allen & Co, has made 14 investments to date, including 4 seeds. Bing serves on the board of directors of sFund companies Lockerz, Cafebots and Klout; sFund...
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