After being out of touch for a while, our Editor, Krishnan Rajagopal and Sameer Desai from GamingIndians got some time to spend with Mr. Jaspreet Bindra, Country Manager of Microsoft India’s E&D Division. What followed was a discussion on what Microsoft India’s plans are for the forthcoming months. Everything from Windows 7 launch to fate of RROD Xbox 360 consoles post warranty and even unused Xbox 360 kiosks were discussed. Click on the link to have a look at what Microsoft India talked about as our man who was there quickly recounts what was said and what it would mean for the Indian gamer.

Elites To Replace The Pros

The Xbox 360 Elites will supplant the Xbox 360 Pros, which will be discontinued, leaving only the Elites and the Arcades in the market. The Elites will be priced at or around the Pro price points. The Arcade version will also get the ones with the Jasper chipsets and the 512 megs of internal storage, along with an “India bundle” that will sell the Arcade for the same price point as it is now, but with PGR4 and Halo 3. Unfortunately, though, there will not be any scheduled price cuts, since there doesn’t seem to be an end to the high import duties in sight. No price cuts for game prices too in spite of the dollar having gone to 48 bucks, games should still go for the older price point. The INR 1895 price point isn’t something that’s happening any time unless the dollar goes to 41 or so! They are working with Redington to drive the prices down, but no assurances.

Forza 3 CE And Halo 3 ODST To Be Day One Releases

Biggest titles in the next six months are Forza 3 and Halo 3 ODST. They will be here on day one. India will see the limited collector’s edition of Forza 3 on day 1. Though its not been revealed what the CE has, rest assured, it’s a CE worthy of the term. As for the Xbox 360 exclusive Splinter Cell Conviction, no word on that since Ubisoft doesn’t sell their games here. They’ll try to do something about it, but don’t hold your breath.There will be a new Gears 2 SKU being launched at the end of the year for Platinum prices, with unconfirmed extra content, map packs. Our guess is that it will be a GOTY edition of sorts.

Xbox 360 As a Brand

As for the Xbox 360 brand, MS India doesn’t see any problem with the “brand”. They feel all target consumers are very well aware of the brand, so they don’t need to push it at all in the country. What they want to push though are the services, including LIVE. They don’t see LIVE making it big in the country, since we are all on low speed DSL when DSL worldwide means “2 mbps plus” .They are planning on working with ISPs to do something, but what exactly is not known, even to them.

What To Do With The Xbox 360 Kiosks?

Coming to the issues with the kiosks remaining unused in the country, they have started a crackdown on such places and calling it a “logistics nightmare in terms of the amount of time and money spent on it”. Jaspreet said that while they have not taken the kiosks out, they have been moving them to areas where they able to get eyeballed more. For example, if a store isn’t using the kiosks, they move it to another location where it might. As for keeping them updated themselves, they don’t want to go through that logistics nightmare really. We suggested that this is something that the community could help out with, but more on that later. Interesting though, that he says that wherever the kiosks are present, the Xbox 360s are used and enjoyed more than PS2s and PS3s, which are mostly sitting pretty (not his words, mind you) next to hi-def Sony TVs playing BluRay movies.

RRODed And No Warranty?

Coming to warranty, they have a policy in place for OWR consoles, but they won’t say what it is. I think because it’s a shitty policy that we won’t like. In any case, post September 23, if your console goes kaput and you are out of warranty, you call up the support helpline and get the bad news straight from the horse’s mouth. They say they won’t make us wait until it goes to Australia and comes back fixed and there will be a separate way of handling this for India, but what exactly isn’t known. As for the fixed units, still circa August 2006, having Opus motherboards, it’s not like India gets the hand me downs while the rest of the world enjoys the Opus motherboards. Whatever is applicable to the rest of the world applies to India, so if they are sticking in Opus boards elsewhere, we’ll get them too, hopefully not making the RROD issue too bad.

Windows 7, Office 2010 And More…

As for the EDD division, going forward they are going to start retailing Windows (starting with 7) and Office 2010 in a big way in the country. What this directly means for gamers is that they won’t see the Xbox 360 as a siren song and will also start paying attention to GFW titles in a BIG way in the country starting this year. Details are unclear, but yes, MS India will do as much as possible to push Windows gaming because of the huge PC gaming market here in the country. Jaspreet was sorry they had been ignoring it for so long, so yeah, they will start to push that too, along with Windows 7, Office 2010 and Windows Mobile 6.5.

What we are also looking at; Microsoft and MVPs, along with MVP lead, is the possibility of establishing Community User Groups that will focus on the Microsoft experience – Windows, Office, GFW, Xbox and all non-developer things Microsoft. What’s also going to happen is Jaspreet’s going to make good on his promise of showing up more online and becoming the community leader for the brands he is representing. All that talk we had the last time of showing up online, having his online presence, etc. will happen this year. FY09 will see every Microsoft activity happen online, which I can only assume, is that offline events such as launch parties, game nights, etc. will see reduced occurrences this year, thanks to the severe beating that the company took as a whole last year.

So thats all from now. We would love to hear what you think about the whole game plan in the comments section.

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