Apparently, it was a very recent decision. Xbox Chief Product Officer Mark Whitten told AllThingsD that the company had been listening to consumer feedback since the product’s unveiling in May, but that the E3 presentation was “the first time we had a chance to really lay out our program.”

“E3 was the first time when we felt like we’d had a chance to tell our complete story and have people see what they liked and what they didn’t like,” Whitten said.

Put another way: Despite all the non-gaming home media features baked into the Xbox One, Microsoft knows that gamers still butter its bread. That E3 presentation was actually less “complete” than the unveiling event because it was all about games, games, games.

Microsoft catered to gamers and ignored big features like the bundled Kinect and TV integration in its onstage E3 presentation, but the fans were still angry. Today’s announcement doesn’t make Redmond look good in the short term, but it cuts its losses before those fans have a chance to sway publishers’ minds or avoid the Xbox One on store shelves.

In other words, if this policy change had to happen at some point, it’s probably smarter for Microsoft to pull the trigger and take the hit now, rather than endangering the One’s launch by dawdling as the anti-DRM winds consistently blew in its face.

Whitten promised that both new DRM policies — the removal of online “check-ins” every 24 hours and the restrictions on physical disc sharing — will not change again. However, third-party developers will still have to choose for themselves if and how much their games will require constant Internet connectivity.

Interestingly, an anonymous (and unverified) forum post, allegedly by an Xbox engineer, predicted a policy change last week. Mandatory online check-ins, the supposed engineer wrote, were “the PoR (plan of record), but I expect it to change after the e3 clusterfuck.”

Microsoft previously declined to comment on the post.

But, like it or not, there’s plenty of evidence that consumers’ mobile habits (or obsessions) are causing a shift in the traditional game industry. Last month, U.S. retail sales of videogame hardware, software and accessories fell 10 percent from a year ago, according to the NPD group, extending a slide spurred by gamers moving to mobile gadgets.

With this in mind, we asked executives from the “big three” console makers this week — Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft — for their thoughts on the mobile shift. Here’s the gist of what each had to say:

Sony: Sony president Jack Tretton dismissed the notion that mobile is drawing gamers away from console gaming. In a five-question Q&A with AllThingsD, Tretton said: “The one thing I think our announcement did was quell any notion that the console was on its way out, which is what people who aren’t really into gaming think is happening. Turn to anyone, any of the gamers here in this crowd [at E3], and ask them if they’re turning to smartphones and tablets over consoles. And then run.”

Nintendo: Nintendo president Satoru Iwata was characteristically resistant to the idea that mobile is having an impact on Nintendo’s gaming audience. “I am not of the opinion that the spread of smart devices has been impacting the videogame industry,” Iwata said in a candid interview. He also doesn’t envision Mario, Luigi and the gang ever coming to, say, the iPhone. “Nintendo has no intention to provide smart devices with our games — at all. Our IP is the most important asset with which we can attract people to our own platform.”

Microsoft: Only Yusuf Mehdi, senior vice president of Microsoft’s Interactive Entertainment division, conceded that mobile games have been impacting the core game industry — but he insisted that it’s a positive thing. In an interview with AllThingsD, Mehdi said that, overall, “[Mobile] brings more people to games. Look at how long the tail of the Xbox 360 has been — I think now you have more people identifying themselves as gamers that just wouldn’t call themselves that before.” When asked whether he believes casual games such as Candy Crush, Words With Friends and the like could actually be gateway games to consoles, Mehdi said he believed they could be, and cited the success of Minecraft — which originated as a PC and mobile game — as an example.

And there you have it — straight from the mouths of the guys heavily invested in traditional console gaming.

In truth, core console gamers are still critical to the health of the industry. And they’re still outspending their mobile gaming counterparts, according to NPD’s recent 2013 Gamer Segmentation report (if only for the obvious reason that console games cost a lot more).

But the group that NPD calls “free and mobile gamers” is a rapidly growing segment that’s likely not going anywhere anytime soon.

But what do you think? Are casual, mobile games taking away from core gaming, or enriching the industry?

(Feature photo courtesy of Sofia Samme/Flickr Creative Commons)

We tried to capture the event in photos for you:

And Comcast, the country’s biggest pay TV provider, says it will do the same thing, along with lots of other ideas you’ve seen elsewhere: Voice control, integration with third-party apps like Pandora, “social TV” features, etc.

Here’s Comcast CEO Brian Roberts previewing his company’s upcoming X2 platform yesterday at the cable industry’s annual convention. If you want to save time, you can skip the preamble and move ahead to the 3:48 mark. And if you’re in a real rush, you can skip the video entirely and skim the press release.

The one thing that X2 won’t do, of course, is give customers the ability to watch TV without paying for a TV subscription, or let them break the TV bundle into smaller chunks, so that people who don’t care about sports don’t need to pay for ESPN, etc.

But then again, none of the pay-TV outsiders that want to wrest control of your living room from Comcast have done that, either — not even Google.

Improving the TV’s interface is an engineering problem that you can solve with time and talent; remaking the TV business is the truly difficult task.

That’s $100 less than the Xbox One, which Microsoft said today would retail for $499, starting in November.

Sony announced the PS4 back in February, but didn’t show the console at that time. Now we know what it looks like, and — surprise! It’s a smooth, black, rectangular box with buttons and a disc drive.

Just as Microsoft began its earlier presentation by talking about the Xbox 360, Sony began by talking about its existing hardware: The PlayStation 3 and the handheld PS Vita. However, no hardware refresh was announced for either device.

“Vita is just beginning its life cycle,” Sony Computer Entertainment President and CEO Jack Tretton said, noting that the Vita will be the “ultimate companion device” to the PlayStation 4.

And the Vita could use some more companions. The Vita has been consistently outsold by the rival Nintendo 3DS, and both handhelds have suffered from the seasonality problems that largely don’t affect those other mobile games — the ones on phones and tablets.

Tretton said Sony’s “commitment is as strong as ever” heading into the PlayStation 3’s seventh holiday season. Despite the lack of new hardware, Sony did show off a slew of big-ticket new games that will work on the PS3, including Batman: Arkham Origins and Grand Theft Auto V.

Sony Worldwide President Shuhei Yoshida said the launch titles available exclusively for the PS4 will include Killzone: Shadow Fall, DriveClub and Knack. In addition, one later section of the presentation put the spotlight on eight indie developers who will be making their console debuts on the PS4.

Sony also announced some non-gaming media features — stressing the point, though, that they’re somehow “curated for gamers” — by way of Sony Pictures CEO Michael Lynton, making his first appearance at a PlayStation event. The music, movie and TV offerings will be a mix of Sony’s own content platforms and third-party services like Netflix, Amazon Instant Video and Verizon’s new Redbox Instant service.

But wait! There’s more!

“I am happy to announce that Sony Pictures is hard at work on a brand-new original programming plan and content that will be available exclusively on PlayStation Network and PlayStation 4,” Lynton said. “We look forward to sharing more details in the near future.”

And, yes, you guessed it: That sounds pretty similar to something Microsoft also officially announced at its Xbox One event last month. The company was lambasted online at that time by hardcore gamers, who alleged that Microsoft’s play to control the living room amounted to some sort of abandonment of the Xbox’s core gaming audience.

And, indeed, at D11 two weeks ago, Sony’s President and CEO Kaz Hirai pledged that the PS4 would be primarily for games. That still seems to be the case, with proportionally less of the event’s time devoted to media than was allotted by Microsoft for its non-gaming offerings.

Tretton returned to the stage at one point to announce — to roaring applause — that the PS4 would support used games, and wouldn’t need to be connected to the Web to play games. That means it won’t use DRM technology to prevent players from lending or reselling the discs they buy, and won’t need to “check in” with Sony online every 24 hours, as the Xbox One will.

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Now, Microsoft is betting a new batch of games will sway gamers towards its upcoming Xbox One — which will cost $500.

These better be some killer games.

Most of the focus at Microsoft’s E3 event earlier today was on software. Some key, exclusive Xbox One titles on the way are Ryse, Killer Instinct!, Crimson Dragon and Sunset Overdrive. Also demoed: Forza Motorsport 5 and Battlefield 5.

And we saw a sneak peek of the next version of Halo, due out in 2014.

The company gave a nod to indie games, as well. Project Spark utilizes Microsoft’s SmartGlass application and will aim to compete with Sony’s LittleBigPlanet. Minecraft and a new game called D4 will be available on the One. (There’s already a Minecraft for Xbox 360, but an upcoming Xbox One version promises bigger maps and more multiplayer options.)

Microsoft corporate vice president Phil Harrison said that 200 indie developers have launched more than 400 games for Xbox to date, totaling $1 billion in sales.

Despite a couple of audio glitches during the show, the trailers and game-play videos got a warm reception from the gamer crowd. Xbox Live Gold subscribers will now have access to two free game downloads a month. And in what’s likely a relief to many Xbox gamers, Microsoft is ditching its “Points” currency for the upcoming One, and will charge users in local currency — a.k.a. real dollars.

Speaking of real dollars! Then the price of the new Xbox One was announced. Must-have titles, exclusive to the Xbox One, become must-weigh titles.

The Redmond, Wash.-based company said that the Xbox One will ship in November for $499. (Microsoft first announced its highly-anticipated, next-generation console at an event at company headquarters late last month.)

That console, by the way, won’t be backwards-compatible with your old games.

In the meantime, Microsoft is putting out a new, slimmer Xbox 360 that borrows features from the One.

To date, Microsoft has sold more than 76 million Xbox 360 consoles. Recent data from the NPD group, which releases a monthly report on the pulse of the videogame industry, showed that 130,000 Xbox 360 units were sold in April 2013, compared with 100,000 unit sales for Sony PlayStation and under 50,000 for the Nintendo Wii U.

130,000 unit sales isn’t much to write home about, but for Xbox, that’s still 28 consecutive months of lording over the PlayStation, the Wii U and the Wii.

Later tonight Sony will host its own event at E3, and all eyes and ears will be straining for announcements around the Japanese electronic maker’s own upcoming console, the PS4.

If Sony undercuts the price of the Xbox One, it’s going to be a real battle for space in Santa’s gift bag this year.

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“We’re gonna update the Xbox 360 console with a modern look and feel based on the Xbox One design,” said marketing and strategy CVP Yusuf Mehdi.

Indeed, the redesign makes the whiter 360 look very similar to the black Xbox One, which Microsoft unveiled last month at its campus in Washington state. The new hardware is available to buy, starting today, Mehdi said.

Also included in the hardware refresh is a new incentive for gamers to subscribe to Xbox Live Gold now, rather than waiting for the next-gen console: Two free games per month, starting with Assassins Creed 2 and Halo 3. Mehdi also promised that “hundreds of new games” are still on the way for the Xbox 360.

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But some of the more interesting products and developments of the show this year might come from companies that can’t afford huge booths. This year, the big players are surrounded (though not especially threatened) by smaller gaming companies that cater to a broadening definition of “gamer.”

On the hardware side, the “big three” console makers have already unveiled or released their next-generation consoles: Sony’s PlayStation 4, Microsoft’s Xbox One and Nintendo’s Wii U, which was released last November. So, lesser-known hardware makers, some of whom have come this far on the backs of ground-up crowdfunding campaigns, will hope to grab a sliver of the spotlight.

Two fledgling hardware companies that will be at E3 and have garnered attention in recent months are Ouya and Oculus VR, maker of the Oculus Rift virtual-reality gaming headset. (For an in-depth Q&A with Oculus, check out this story from last week.)

Ouya, led by gaming industry vet Julie Urhman, first came into existence last summer as a Kickstarter project. The company ultimately raised more than $8.5 million dollars to fund its production of a $99 palm-sized video console that runs Google’s open Android operating system.

Also on the radar this week is London-based PlayJam, which has spent the past 12 years building gaming platforms for smart TVs. At E3, the company will be demoing its $80 GameStick, a thumb-drive-like device launching next month that plugs directly into the TV and connects wirelessly to a retro handheld controller.

Yet another Android-based device, called the Unu, will be shown off at E3 with the hope of appealing to both the gamer and the media consumer. Unu looks and feels like a tablet — and can be used as one — but plugs into a TV-connected dock to run the same Google Play games and media apps on the TV as it does on the tablet. A “media edition” of the Unu will ship this summer for $199, while a “gamer” version, which includes a game controller, will sell for $249.

“Nintendo did very well capturing the whole family segment with the Wii,” said Nick Repenning, vice president of business development for Unu’s maker Snakebyte, of the company’s positioning. “But Wii U hasn’t picked up where Wii left off, and that’s where we get in. We’re tailoring to the same consumer. But where a game for the Wii is $40 or more, our games are between $1 and $10.”

Repenning’s comment gets to the crux of what is so disruptive about these smaller, scrappy companies homing in on E3: Price. For both developers and consumers, making and playing games is potentially more affordable when there are more avenues available than just the walled gardens of Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo.

“From a developer perspective, you used to have to develop for the ‘big three,’ spend thousands on a dev kit and sign your life away,” said Anthony Johnson, PlayJam’s chief marketing officer. “There are seriously talented game makers out there in the indie community who now have easier access to gamers with platforms like ours.”

But that access is still a long way off from being “easy” at E3, according to Ian Kinsey, the director of Semiformal Studios. Kinsey and his company are trying to disrupt the normal show floor this year with a project called Indies Crash E3. He said the cost of attending and nabbing a booth is prohibitive.

“They’re all about the big guys,” Kinsey said of the Entertainment Software Association, which produces E3. Groups of indie developers currently cannot share booths (which start at $30,000 for 600 square feet on the main floor) to demo games without paying an additional $5,000 per head from other companies.

So Indies Crash E3 held an online vote to bring 10 indie companies to E3. But to get around the $5,000 fees, they’re only showing off their games in private demos for journalists — not to the normal attendees passing by, as they might at a more indie-friendly conference like GDC or the PAX conference series.

In recent years the traditional gaming industry has seen declines in sales due to a variety of factors. NPD data for the month of April showed that total gaming retail sales slid by 25 percent year over year to $495.2 million. Hardware sales fell by 42 percent in the same time frame to $109.5 million.

Big-name software titles and game franchises have remained a bright spot, indicating that many gamers are still willing to spend big bucks on key titles. But at the same time, mobile gaming is on the rise, and the consumers NPD calls “free and mobile gamers” are a rapidly growing segment of the industry.

To be sure, the big console makers and game publishers will still have new tricks and titles to unveil. Many people will be looking for announcements or clues on the launch date and retail price of the Xbox One. The same questions linger around Sony’s PlayStation 4, although the two companies are taking decidedly different approaches to the market: The Xbox One is aimed at controlling all the media available in the living room, while Sony has doubled down on gaming as its primary focus.

The buzzword to watch across all of these devices and games is “cross-platform.” It’s easier to make the leap with Android-powered consoles like the Ouya, Gamestick and Unu, but companies that want to reach as many gamers as possible are angling for games that can be played anytime, anywhere. The race is on in a fragmented market to offer a high-quality experience no matter how you get your game on.

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Oculus VR’s Palmer Luckey, left, and Nate Mitchell, right. At center, AllThingsD’s Lauren Goode tries out the Oculus Rift at CES 2013.

This is the second part of our two-part Q&A with Palmer Luckey and Nate Mitchell, the co-founders of virtual-reality gaming company Oculus VR. In Part One, Luckey and Mitchell discussed controlling expectations, what they want from developers, and the challenges of trying to make games do something radically different.

AllThingsD: What do you guys think about Google Glass? They’ve got their dev kits out right now, too, and –

Palmer Luckey: — What’s Google Glass? [laughs]

No, seriously, they’re doing something sort of similar with getting this wearable computing device to developers. Does the early buzz about Glass worry you?

Luckey: No. They’re not a gaming device, and they’re not a VR device, and they’re not an immersive device, and they’re five times more expensive than us.

Nate Mitchell: It’s just a completely different product. Wearable computing is super-interesting, and we’d love to see more wearable computing projects in the market. At Oculus, especially, we’re excited about the possibilities of Google Glass. We’ve seen it, we’ve checked it out, it’s very cool. But if you bring them together –

Luckey: Our image size is like 15 times larger than theirs. It’s like the difference between looking at a watch screen and a 60-inch monitor. It’s just an enormous difference.

Mitchell: With the Rift, you’re in there. You’re totally immersed in the world. I think one of the things people keep bringing up (with Glass) is the awkward, the social aspect. For the Rift, you strap into this thing, and you’re gone.

Luckey: It’s about being inside the virtual world, not caring about the real one.

Mitchell: You could put your Glass on in the virtual space.

Luckey: We could do that! We could simulate Glass. … It’s not that hard. You just have a tiny heads-up display floating there. A really tiny one.

Mitchell: I like it.

“Okay, Rift, take a picture. Okay, Rift, record a video …”

Luckey: There’s actually Second Life mods like that. People sell heads-up displays that you can buy.

Mitchell: Really?

Luckey: And they put information in there like distance to waypoints and stuff.

Mitchell: Oh, that’s cool!

Luckey: Yeah, they overlay it on the screen when your character’s wearing it.

I never really “got” Second Life. Minecraft, I can wrap my head around quickly. But Second Life …

Luckey: It’s very difficult to get into. There’s a steep learning curve. The last time I went into Second Life was to buy bitcoins from a crazy guy who was selling them below market value, but you had to go into Second Life to meet with him.

Mitchell: The underbelly of the Internet.

Luckey: They’re actually working on Oculus Rift support, though. The kind of people who make games like Second Life definitely see the potential for virtual reality — being able to step into your virtual life.

And if you’re completely immersed in the game, I guess that wherever you’re playing, you need to trust whoever’s around you.

Mitchell: Absolutely. There’s already some sneaking up on people happening in the office. Someone’s developing, they’re testing the latest integration, and then Palmer comes up and puts his hands on their shoulders: “Heyyyy, Andrew! What’s going on?” There’s a trust factor.

Luckey: Have you seen the Guillotine Simulator? (video below) Some people are showing that without even telling the person what it is: “Here, check this out!” “Whoa, what’s going on?” And then — [guillotine sound effect]

Mitchell: One thing that that does lead into is, we’re exploring ways to just improve the usability of the device. When you put on the Rift, especially with the dev kit, you’re shut off from the outside world. What we’re looking at doing is how can we make it easy to pull it off. Right now, you have to slip it over your head like ski goggles. The dev kit was designed to be this functional tool, not the perfect play-for-10-hours device. With the consumer version, we’re going for that polished user experience.

What about motion sickness? Is it possible to overcome the current need for people to only play for a short period of time on their first go?

Luckey: The better we make the hardware, the easier it’ll be for people to just pick up and play. Right now, the hardware isn’t perfect. That’s one of the innate problems of VR: You’re trying to make something that tricks your brain into thinking it’s real. Your brain is very sensitive at telling you things are wrong. The better you can make it, the more realistic you can make it, the more easily your brain’s gonna accept the illusion and not be throwing warning bells.

You mentioned in one of your recent speeches that the Scout in Team Fortress 2 –

Luckey: — he’s running at like 40 miles per hour. But it’s not just, “Oh, I’m running fast.” It’s the physics of the whole thing. In real life, if you are driving at 40mph, you can’t instantly start moving backward. You can’t instantly start strafing sideways. You have inertia. And that’s something that, right now, games are not designed to have. You’re reacting in these impossible ways.

Mitchell: In that same vein, just as Palmer’s saying the hardware’s not perfect yet, a huge part of it is the content.

Luckey: You could make perfect hardware. Pretend we have the Matrix. Now you take someone and put them in a fighter jet and have them spinning in circles. That’s going to make someone sick no matter how good it is, because that actually does make people sick. If you make perfect hardware, and then you do things that make people sick in real life, you’re gonna make them sick in VR, too. Right now, there’s lots of things going on in games that don’t make people sick only because they’re looking at them on a screen. Or, in so many games, they’ll have cutscenes where they take control of the camera and shake it around. You don’t want to do that in VR because you’re not actually shaking around in real life.

You’re changing the experience that you have previously established within VR.

Mitchell: It breaks the immersion.

Luckey: And that’s why it’s so hard to instantly transfer. In the original version of Half Life 2, when you’d go into a new space for the first time, the whole game would just freeze for a second while it loads. It’s just a short freeze, but players were running along or driving along and all of a sudden, jjt! Now it looks like the whole world’s dragging along with you, and a lot of people feel very queasy when that happens.

Mitchell: It comes back to content. My talk at GDC was very specifically about how developing for VR is different from a 2-D monitor. All those things like cutscenes, storytelling, scale of the world — if the player is at four feet on the 2-D monitor and you put them in there, they immediately notice. They look down and they have the stereo cues: “I’m a midget!” So you make them taller, and now they don’t fit through doors. We really do believe that, at first, you’re going to see these ports of existing games, but the best “killer app” experiences are going to come from those made-for-VR games.

Luckey: And that’s not even to say it has to be new franchises. It doesn’t have to be a new type of game. But you want the content to be designed specifically for the hardware.

Mitchell: It’s just like the iPhone. The best games come from developers pairing hardware and software.

Oculus VR CEO Brendan Iribe testing out the Rift at D: Dive Into Media.

And that’s the 10,000-foot view: Does VR change game design in a fundamental way?

Mitchell: Yes. Fundamentally. Absolutely. I think, right now, there’s this great renaissance in the indie community. Indie developers are doing awesome things. If you look at games like The Walking Dead, you’ve got the mainstream genres here. You’re going to have a lot of these indie games start to feel more natural in virtual reality, because that’s almost, like, the intended experience.

Luckey: And not to invent a whole new genre on the fly, but you don’t see many first-person card games or something. There’s a lot of card game videogames, but there’s not many that are first-person because it wouldn’t make any sense to do.

Like a poker game where you could look around the table and read people’s reactions?

Mitchell: Exactly.

Luckey: And you could have all kinds of things integrated into it. I guess that would fit into the first-person-shooter genre, but not really, because you’re not moving and you’re not shooting. You’re just playing cards.

Mitchell: And if you look at the research that’s been done on virtual characters, it’s the type of thing where, if you smile at me in VR, even if you’re an NPC (non-playable character), I’m much more likely to smile back. Your brain is tricked into believing you’re there.

Luckey: There’s also fascinating research on confidence levels in VR, even tiny things. There was a study where a bunch of people performed tasks in real life, in a control group, and then performed them in VR. And the only difference is that one group in VR was about six inches taller than the other group. So, one was shorter than the NPC they were interacting with, one was taller. Universally, all of the “taller” people exhibited better negotiation with the NPCs. Then, they took them out (of the VR simulation) and they redid the (real-world) study, putting everyone back in another trial with a physical person. The people who’d been tall in VR and negotiated as a taller person did better when they went back into the real negotiation as well. It’s ridiculous.

Mitchell: That’s the sort of thing we’re super-excited about. That’s the dream.

And do you have a timeline for when –

Mitchell: When the dream comes to fruition?

Luckey: It’s a dream, man! Come on! [laughs]

Not when it comes to fruition. Are there milestones for specific accomplishments along the way?

Luckey: Sure, we have them, internally. [laughs]

Mitchell: We have a road map, but like we keep saying, a huge part of this is content. Without the content, it’s just a pair of ski goggles.

Luckey: And we don’t even know, necessarily, what a road map needs to look like. We’re getting this feedback, and if a lot of people need a certain feature — well, that means it’s going to take a little longer.

Mitchell: But we have a rough road map planned, and a lot of exciting stuff planned that I think you’ll see over the course of the next year.

And is there a timeline for when the first consumer version comes out?

Mitchell: It’s TBD. But what we can say is, Microsoft and Sony release their dev kits years in advance before they get up onstage and say, “The Xbox One is coming.” We went for the same strategy, just open and publicly.

Luckey: And we don’t want to wait many years before doing it.

Mitchell: Right. So, right now, we’re giving developers the chance to build content, but they’re also co-developing the consumer version of the Rift with us. Once everyone’s really happy with it, that’s when you’ll see us come to market.

Luckey: And not sooner. We don’t want to announce something and then push for that date, even though we know we can make it better.

And what about the company, Oculus VR? Is this dream you’re talking about something you have to realize on your own? Do you want to someday get acquired?

Luckey: Our No. 1 goal is doing it on our own. We’re not looking to get acquired, we’re not looking to flip the company or anything. I mean, partnering with someone? Sure, we’re totally open to discussions. We’re not, like, we want to do this with no help.

But you wouldn’t want to be absorbed into a bigger company that’s doing more than just VR.

Mitchell: The goal has been to build great consumer VR, specifically for gaming. We all believe VR is going to be one of the most important technologies of –

Luckey: — ever!

Mitchell: Basically.

Not to be too hyperbolic or anything.

Luckey: It’s hard not to be. It’s like every other technological advance could practically be moot if you could do all of it in the virtual world. Why would you even need to advance those things in the real world?

Mitchell: Sooo …

Luckey: [laughs]

Mitchell: With that in mind, we have to figure out how we get there. But right now, we’re doing it on our own.

Luckey: And we think we can deliver a good consumer VR experience without having to partner with anyone. We’re open to partnering, but we don’t think we have to. We’re not banking on it.

And how does being based in southern California compare to being closer to a more conventional tech hub like Silicon Valley?

Mitchell: Recruiting is a little harder for us. But overall, we’ve been able to attract incredible talent.

Luckey: And if you’re in Silicon Valley, it’s probably one of the easiest places to start a company in terms of hiring people. But VR is such a tiny field, it’s not like all of a sudden we’re going to go to Silicon Valley and there’s, like, thousands of VR experts. Now, if I’m a Web company or a mobile company –

Mitchell: — that’s where I’d want to be.

Luckey: But in this case, these people aren’t necessarily all up in Silicon Valley. We’ve hired a bunch of people from Texas and Virginia and all these other places. It’s a niche industry. We actually have the biggest concentration of people working in consumer VR right now. And a lot of the top talent we get, they don’t care where we are, as long as it’s not, like, Alaska. They just really want to work on virtual reality, and there’s no one else doing it like we are.

According to sources close to the situation, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is working on what is likely to turn into a significant restructuring of the massive software company, which could also move several current execs to more prominent roles.

Sources noted that the changes — which center on solidifying Microsoft into the “devices and services company” that Ballmer wrote about in his annual shareholder letter last October — are still being worked out, and could still change substantively.

But, noted several people close to the situation, the new configuration could include larger roles for several execs, including Satya Nadella, president of its Servers and Tools division; Tony Bates, president of its Skype communications division; and Don Mattrick, president of its Interactive Entertainment division.

How their new and perhaps expanded roles and those of others in top management will shake out is unclear.

What seems likely is an organizational structure that will focus on configuring Microsoft around devices and services, both in the enterprise and the consumer space, and simplifying its management. Currently, Microsoft has a rather convoluted set-up, with other major units such as Business Solutions, Online Services and Microsoft Office.

But how Microsoft’s flagship software product, Windows, fits into the new org is still under debate.

Wrote Ballmer about the changes for Microsoft last fall: “This is a significant shift, both in what we do and how we see ourselves — as a devices and services company. It impacts how we run the company, how we develop new experiences, and how we take products to market for both consumers and businesses.”

The possible restructuring comes amid increasing investor pressure on Microsoft and, interestingly, a recent run-up in its stock.

Nomura Equity Research analyst Rick Sherlund, who has covered the company since it went public, wrote last week that “there may be a shift in the wind upcoming for Microsoft, with shareholders potentially demanding a greater say in the direction of the company and how it might be run to drive a better return to shareholders.” In his note, Sherlund recommended that Microsoft consider selling off its Bing search business, as well as its Xbox gaming unit.

This focus on shareholder returns has again come into sharper relief since it was disclosed that ValueAct Capital had bought about 1 percent of Microsoft’s stock, and Sherlund noted that this stake could allow the hedge fund to push for change “with the support of others to advance their agenda for change.”

But unlike a more pugnacious previous effort to spur change at Microsoft by Greenlight Capital’s David Einhorn, ValueAct’s Jeff Ubben has been more dulcet in his tone, noting that Microsoft’s strong software background and enterprise strength was key when combined with future trends, such as cloud computing.

“Microsoft could be the largest cloud company in the world,” Ubben said in a recent speech.

That’s an open question still, but investors are certainly warming to Microsoft, after a long period of weak stock performance. Interestingly, over the last six months, Microsoft shares have risen more than 31 percent, perhaps in anticipation of some change to come.

A Microsoft spokesman declined to comment.

“The most important thing we need to make sure we do at least initially is that we all agree and understand that the PS4 is a great videogame console that appeals to video gamers,” Hirai said in a briefing with reporters after his onstage appearance at D: All Things Digital. “If we miss that part then I don’t think we get the initial establishment of the console.”

Hirai said that formula has worked in the past, including with the PlayStation 3.

That said, there are capabilities in the device that will make it well suited to other uses, Hirai said, without giving details.

“We take a look at this first and foremost as a game console,” Hirai said. “We don’t want to end there. That’s an area we will obviously reveal and talk about in the coming months.”

Another important area for Sony is its retail store effort, something Hirai said is continuing and changing with the adoption of new retail formats including the addition of smaller-format stores and kiosks. The company is rolling out the approach it took in its Los Angeles-area store to other retail locations around the globe, he said.

“[Retail] is important in telling the Sony story in a compelling way,” Hirai said.

Full D11 Conference Coverage

But what does the future of that business entail? I had the chance to chat with Roku founder and CEO Anthony Wood at our D: All Things Digital conference about Roku’s plans to push directly into TV sets. Also hot topics: Whether Wood sees the new Xbox One or a potential Apple TV set as a threat and what he thinks the living room TV will look like in five years.

Here’s the full video:

Full D11 Conference Coverage

 

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130529/whos-at-d-roku-ceo-anthony-wood-on-the-future-of-tv-video/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130523/microsoft-prevails-against-google-in-itc-xbox-case/ http://allthingsd.com/20130523/microsoft-prevails-against-google-in-itc-xbox-case/#comments Fri, 24 May 2013 00:12:44 +0000 Steven D. Jones http://allthingsd.com/?p=324987 A federal trade panel has ruled that Microsoft Corp.’s Xbox doesn’t infringe on wireless patents owned by Motorola Mobility, another in a series of legal decisions that could quiet patent litigation surrounding popular consumer electronic devices.

The International Trade Commission determined the technology Microsoft uses for wireless communication with the Xbox doesn’t infringed on a Motorola patent for wireless connectivity.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130523/microsoft-prevails-against-google-in-itc-xbox-case/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130523/jawbone-hires-microsofts-mindy-mount-as-president/ http://allthingsd.com/20130523/jawbone-hires-microsofts-mindy-mount-as-president/#comments Thu, 23 May 2013 17:00:50 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=324605

In a key hire, Jawbone said today that it had hired Mindy Mount, a top corporate VP at Microsoft, as its president.

The move by the San Francisco-based maker of wireless, music and wearable devices is part of what has been a major upgrading of its management and board. Recently, Jawbone added Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer and Rob Wiesenthal of Warner Music as directors.

Jawbone has also recently done a big acquisition — purchasing BodyMedia, a wearable health and fitness company, for $100 million. The move comes just a couple months after it bought data and digital-design companies Massive Health and Visere.

All this expansion requires tight organizational efforts and Mount has a lot of financial and operational experience, having held several key jobs at the software giant. She was most recently corporate VP and CFO at Microsoft’s Online Services Division, which includes Bing, MSN and Microsoft Advertising. Before that she held a similar job at the Entertainment and Devices Division, which has the Xbox, Zune and Windows Phone units.

Previous to that, Mount ran AOL’s U.K. unit, worked in strategy at Time Warner and also was an exec at Morgan Stanley. She has an MBA from the Harvard Graduate School of Business and an undergraduate degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

In an interview today, Mount said that what attracted her to Jawbone was the challenge of scaling the fast-growth company, which is helmed by CEO and co-founder Hosain Rahman.

“Right out of the block, I’ll be spending time on business operations, since the scale and scope and complexity of Jawbone has really increased,” she said. “What really attracted me to the role is that it is a really meaty one … It’s a company with great products, where I can come in and have real impact, because consumer electronics companies really have to execute.”

Jawbone products include Jawbone wireless headsets, Jambox speakers and the Up personal fitness wristbands. The company has raised a lot of funding, totaling about $210 million from such venture firms as Andreessen Horowitz, Khosla Ventures, Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia Capital, as well as Deutsche Telekom, investor Yuri Milner and others.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130523/jawbone-hires-microsofts-mindy-mount-as-president/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130522/xbox-one-joins-the-gamecasting-fray-with-social-game-dvr/ http://allthingsd.com/20130522/xbox-one-joins-the-gamecasting-fray-with-social-game-dvr/#comments Wed, 22 May 2013 15:00:06 +0000 Eric Johnson http://allthingsd.com/?p=324120 Games were given second billing at Microsoft’s Xbox One unveiling yesterday, but one of the coolest new features of the new console is only for games: Xbox One will be a social-media-ready DVR for gameplay video recaps.

Which means, in a nutshell, that developers will be able to tell their games to automatically record certain types of in-game events and achievements. For example, that amazing headshot you just made in Call of Duty: Ghosts? It will be auto-captured in all its gory detail, packaged and ready to send to your online friends.

Which friends, specifically? Marketing and strategy CVP Yusuf Mehdi declined to name names just yet, but said it will be possible to use a dedicated button on the Xbox One controller to upload videos to “popular sharing sites.”

This isn’t an entirely new phenomenon. Back in April, I wrote about how “gamecasting” is already poised to become a big deal for mainstream gamers. YouTube and game-video site Twitch are arming developers with tools that will let them put video recording and sharing functionality directly in their games.

And, of course, Sony announced way back in February that the PlayStation 4 would also let players snip and share their gameplay videos to live video site Ustream.

But Microsoft isn’t trying to reinvent the social gaming wheel; the company just wants to make it easier. With most games right now, you need additional hardware and software to broadcast a live multiplayer game or record yourself playing through a single-player campaign.

Lowering those mainstream-unfriendly hurdles means that a lot of players who just want to brag about their latest achievements will be inadvertently producing free commercials for games with their socially shared videos.

A Twitch spokesperson declined to comment when asked whether Xbox videos would be shareable to the gaming-oriented site. Ustream spokesperson Joellen Ferrer said, “We were not part of this latest announcement, [but] we aim to provide a ubiquitous experience across all platforms and will continue to push these conversations to provide the best experiences for users.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130522/xbox-one-joins-the-gamecasting-fray-with-social-game-dvr/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130522/why-microsofts-xbox-one-wont-kick-the-cable-guy-out-of-your-house/ http://allthingsd.com/20130522/why-microsofts-xbox-one-wont-kick-the-cable-guy-out-of-your-house/#comments Wed, 22 May 2013 10:00:42 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=324234 Like everyone else, Microsoft wants to control your living room.

The problem with that plan: The cable guy already controls your living room. He’s not leaving anytime soon.

So, despite what you may have read yesterday, the new Xbox One isn’t TV’s future, today.

If you squint at it, you can imagine that Xbox One can help Microsoft dislodge the cable guy one day. But, for now, Microsoft is simply trying to take up a little more space. More precisely: Its box won’t let you watch live TV unless you have a pay TV subscription.

This shouldn’t be a surprise, as Microsoft has already signaled for some time that it wants to work with the pay TV guys, not boot them out.

Its previous forays into moving TV to the Xbox, via deals with programmers like ESPN and HBO, have only worked for customers who already had pay TV. And while Microsoft has previously mulled creating its own TV service, it has shelved the idea, and insists that it doesn’t want to build a pay TV competitor.

Related: With the exception of Intel, every big outsider that has approached the TV Industrial Complex has reached the same conclusion. Which is why Google Fiber TV looks just like regular cable TV, and why Apple TV has yet to do much more than play Netflix and iTunes.

And Microsoft will be literally tied to cable. In order to get the TV part of Xbox One to work, you’ll end up plugging it into your existing cable box, and performing what the industry calls an “HDMI pass-through.”

[CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story incorrectly reported that Xbox One owners would need an additional piece of hardware to connect their machines with their set-top boxes.]

In essence, Xbox One is acting as a sort of custom remote for your cable box, which will let you change the channel; it is also creating its own programming guide so you can see what’s on TV.

But note that Xbox One won’t give you full control of the set-top box — you won’t have access to the DVR your cable company provides, or any video-on-demand features they offer. If you want to do any of that, you’ll have to switch inputs, and go back to the cable guy’s system.

[UPDATE: As All Things D reader "Taz" notes, Comcast, the country's biggest pay TV company, already provides Xbox 360 users to their video on demand service via an app, and suggests that the company could do the same with the Xbox One. That's true, but so far the two companies don't have an agreement in place.]

And beyond the technical arrangements, Microsoft is being as explicit as it can about the goodwill it has toward the cable guys. While the company’s marketing says its box can do everything, Microsoft’s official communications and fine print make it clear that it can’t do squat — TV-wise — without the TV Industrial Complex.

Here, for instance, is a response I got from a Microsoft PR rep when I asked about the Xbox One’s program guide, and whether they needed permission from the cable guys to build it:

“Information that appears in the OneGuide has been created and licensed by Xbox, and works in conjunction with video services that consumers subscribe to from cable and satellite companies. We value our partnerships with MVPDs (pay TV operators), and our vision is for Xbox One to work in tandem with MVPDs’ services and offer a unique and interactive experience on top of your favorite entertainment.”

Got that? “In conjunction” … “in tandem” … “on top of.” Pretty clear.

What is interesting is that, as far as I can tell, Microsoft hasn’t gotten the explicit blessing from all of the pay TV services to launch the Xbox One. It seems to have told some, but not all, of the TV guys about it in advance, but in any case doesn’t think it needs their permission.

In an interview with my colleague Eric Johnson on Tuesday, Microsoft entertainment boss Yusuf Mehdi said Microsoft would be reaching out to the TV guys to get additional features, like DVR recording and playback. And if Microsoft continues with that kind of tight partnership, then the cable guys won’t be leaving your house for a long time.

That said, if Xbox One really does become the primary way you watch video programming — not just live TV but video, period — then it’s possible to imagine a scenario where Microsoft, with an improved bargaining position, starts trying to push the cable guys closer to the door.

Don’t count on it happening any time soon, though. Those dudes are hard to move.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130522/why-microsofts-xbox-one-wont-kick-the-cable-guy-out-of-your-house/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130521/xbox-one-design-started-from-a-blank-slate/ http://allthingsd.com/20130521/xbox-one-design-started-from-a-blank-slate/#comments Tue, 21 May 2013 20:36:08 +0000 Eric Johnson http://allthingsd.com/?p=324049 After the glitzy unveiling of the Xbox One this morning in Redmond, Microsoft dove into the technical details that it says make the new console a worthy successor to the Xbox 360.

The short version of the pitch: The One is not an iteration; it’s a complete media overhaul.

“When you look at people who are watching media today … it’s a very dynamic world,” development director Boyd Multerer said during a panel discussion by Xbox team members. “We realized we had a real problem.”

Panelists described the console as starting from a “blank slate,” since the rise of both laptops and mobile devices as people’s preferred computing hardware happened after the Xbox 360 launched in 2005. Multerer said the company chose to start over rather than bank on the more advanced hardware in the Xbox One to carry it forward.

The biggest software-side change, as noted earlier, is the ability to use your voice to launch apps in tandem with one another (for example, to make a Skype call while you’re watching a movie). In other words, the Xbox One is competing with the “second screen” of phones or tablets by trying to give viewers the ability to multitask on their TV screens.

Basically, the One’s operating system is split into two sections: One resource-heavy partition for games, aimed at giving developers a predictable amount of power, and another partition running constantly in the background that can juggle multiple side apps for a “long period of time,” Multerer said.

Fellow panelist and Microsoft CVP Todd Holmdahl described the connected motion sensor, Kinect, as “completely redesigned from the ground up.” He said it has a 60 percent better field of view and the ability to detect much smaller objects, like fingers, which should make motion controls more accurate.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130521/xbox-one-design-started-from-a-blank-slate/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130521/and-microsofts-new-console-is-called-xbox-one/ http://allthingsd.com/20130521/and-microsofts-new-console-is-called-xbox-one/#comments Tue, 21 May 2013 17:07:15 +0000 Eric Johnson http://allthingsd.com/?p=323923 Microsoft’s new gaming and media console will be called Xbox One and will launch “later this year,” the company announced at an event on its campus in Redmond, Wash., this morning.

The event, Xbox: A New Generation Revealed, began with a video message from Microsoft employees, celebrities and Xbox players. “For the first time, you and your TV are going to have a relationship,” one of the employees said in the video.

“Today, we put you at the center of a new generation in the living room,” interactive entertainment president Don Mattrick said in a welcome address.

“The living room has changed radically over the last eight years,” Mattrick said. “To continue to lead, we must provide compelling answers to new questions.”

The device is a sleek black box that sits horizontally on the table, with a Kinect mounted on top; the accompanying game controller is also black. However, marketing CVP Yusuf Mehdi demoed voice and hand-gesture controls, directed at the Kinect attached to the Xbox, that are intended to replace remotes.

Users will turn the console on with their voices by saying “Xbox on.” When they say things like “Xbox, movies,” “Xbox, game” or “Xbox, TV,” the console launches the appropriate media service.

The short version: “Games, music, movies, web, and now, Skype and live TV.” As predicted, this is an uber-device for the living room, not a games-focused console.

Mehdi also demoed the ability to open multiple services simultaneously. While watching the first Star Trek movie, he received a Skype call from a coworker and opened Internet Explorer to look for tickets to the new sequel.

The motion-sensing Kinect will be bundled with the Xbox One, and now understands human motion better — including what it looks like when humans balance — and has the ability to use heartbeat data.

More than 300,000 servers will power the new Xbox Live experience on Xbox One. A built-in DVR lets players record and rediscover videos of their gameplay. And a few specs: 8 gigabytes system memory, 500 GB hard drive, a Blu-Ray drive, HDMI in/out and USB 3.0.

Nearly half an hour into the talk, games finally took center stage, by way of EA Sports’ Andrew Wilson, who announced “revolutionary” versions of the company’s pro sports games, powered by a new engine called “EA Sports Ignite.” Then, Microsoft Studios’ Phil Spencer said his studio will be releasing 15 exclusive games for Xbox One in its first quarter, eight of which are new franchises.

Xbox Entertainment Studios’ Nancy Tellem then took the stage to talk about how TV on Xbox will be more immersive and social. “Xbox is about to become the next watercooler,” she said. A live-action Halo TV series, produced by Steven Spielberg, will be coming to Xbox.

A partnership between Xbox and the NFL will integrate live game broadcasts with fantasy football. That multi-service feature Mehdi demoed will show fantasy scores auto-updating as the game on the field evolves.

The “one more thing” (if such a phrase is not verboten at a Microsoft event) is that the downloadable content for Call of Duty: Ghosts will come to Xbox One first.

Microsoft said more information about the Xbox One would be released at the industry conference E3 next month.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130521/and-microsofts-new-console-is-called-xbox-one/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130521/durango-on-the-horizon-heres-whats-interesting-about-microsofts-new-xbox/ http://allthingsd.com/20130521/durango-on-the-horizon-heres-whats-interesting-about-microsofts-new-xbox/#comments Tue, 21 May 2013 13:30:48 +0000 Eric Johnson http://allthingsd.com/?p=323491 In just a few hours, Microsoft is scheduled to unveil its newest videogame console, code-named Durango.

The Xbox 360 sequel will be Microsoft’s first completely new console — unless you count the 360 add-on Kinect, which few would — since 2005. Rumors abound about everything from its name (Xbox Infinity? Xbox 720?) to whether the new Xbox will require a consistent Internet connection, a long-running fan theory seemingly rebutted earlier this month by an internal email that Ars Technica said it has.

But the most important thing to remember is that for Microsoft this event is about much more than games. The company’s PR line is that the big reveal is about “a new generation of games, TV and entertainment.”

This is not a surprise. With more than 76 million of the consoles installed worldwide, non-gaming Xbox usage has been outpacing gaming usage since last March, growing 57 percent in the past year.

And last year at this time, we learned that the Xbox was the most popular video-playing gadget in the U.S., according to video ad company FreeWheel.

Then, at D: Dive Into Media in February, Microsoft’s entertainment and digital media president Nancy Tellem told AllThingsD’s Peter Kafka that the interactive original content Microsoft has been developing in a 125-person studio in Santa Monica could be released this year.

Some industry watchers have speculated that Durango and Sony’s PlayStation 4 could be the “last consoles,” but that narrative is a goose chase. “Console,” today, means something completely different from what it meant 20, 10 or even five years ago.

The thing to keep an eye on today, then, is how much of the planned one-hour presentation will be spent on games versus all the other forms of media that the new Xbox will be able to interact with and control. With game developers’ attention spans waning, it would not be out of the question for most of the show to be about the “TV and entertainment” parts of that PR line.

The unveiling event on Microsoft’s Redmond campus is scheduled to begin at 10 am PT (1 pm ET), and will be broadcast live on cable channel Spike TV and GameSpot’s channel on Twitch. AllThingsD will be in attendance and posting the news here.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130521/durango-on-the-horizon-heres-whats-interesting-about-microsofts-new-xbox/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130516/amd-shares-crash-on-goldman-sachs-downgrade/ http://allthingsd.com/20130516/amd-shares-crash-on-goldman-sachs-downgrade/#comments Thu, 16 May 2013 19:40:56 +0000 Arik Hesseldahl http://allthingsd.com/?p=322644 Shares of chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices have fallen by more than 13 percent today following word of a downgrade to “sell” by Goldman Sachs analyst James Covello. With sales of PCs slowing to rates not seen since records have been kept, the outlook for AMD, Covello argues, despite winning supply contracts from both Microsoft and Sony in forthcoming gaming systems, doesn’t justify its recent rise to as high as $4.40 a share. AMD was trading at $3.80 a share, down 59 cents with 30 minutes to go in the session.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130516/amd-shares-crash-on-goldman-sachs-downgrade/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130514/twitch-app-for-xbox-360-will-let-you-watch-but-not-stream-game-videos/ http://allthingsd.com/20130514/twitch-app-for-xbox-360-will-let-you-watch-but-not-stream-game-videos/#comments Tue, 14 May 2013 13:01:58 +0000 Eric Johnson http://allthingsd.com/?p=321117 Videogame video-streaming service Twitch is getting an Xbox 360 app, the company announced today. The app will let owners of Microsoft’s console watch any of the site’s top 300 live channels, though it will not let them make their own videos, one of the features Sony has promised for its upcoming PlayStation 4. However, a Twitch spokesperson said Microsoft will show off the app in more detail shortly after its next-generation console event, “Xbox Revealed,” next week.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130514/twitch-app-for-xbox-360-will-let-you-watch-but-not-stream-game-videos/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130424/microsoft-will-unveil-new-xbox-may-21/ http://allthingsd.com/20130424/microsoft-will-unveil-new-xbox-may-21/#comments Wed, 24 Apr 2013 19:08:03 +0000 Eric Johnson http://allthingsd.com/?p=315178 Microsoft will show off its next-generation Xbox videogame console at its Redmond, Wash., campus on May 21, according to invitations sent to reporters today. The Verge previously reported that the new Xbox, code-named Durango, will interact with owners’ cable boxes. Microsoft’s Nancy Tellem and Yusuf Mehdi shared numbers about its current living room fixture, the seven-year-old Xbox 360, at D: Dive Into Media in February.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130424/microsoft-will-unveil-new-xbox-may-21/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130405/blackberrys-pitch-to-ios-and-android-game-developers-were-the-same-but-different/ http://allthingsd.com/20130405/blackberrys-pitch-to-ios-and-android-game-developers-were-the-same-but-different/#comments Fri, 05 Apr 2013 17:33:04 +0000 Eric Johnson http://allthingsd.com/?p=307879 At the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco last week, most mobile devs said they would focus on iOS and/or Android (usually both), and play the “wait and see” game with everyone else. But in sync with its surprisingly good fourth-quarter earnings, BlackBerry is pitching the idea that bringing games into its new OS is a no-brainer.

“I’ve been evangelizing that BlackBerry is not a business device,” global gaming head Anders Jeppsson said. “It used to be, maybe, many years ago. But over 80 percent of our users are active consumers today, and they’re very, very social.”

In order to get to those users, though, developers must first be persuaded that porting games over to BlackBerry is simple and cheap. Naturally, Jeppsson said it is, thanks in part to the company’s open-source efforts on Github and the cross-platform social gaming tools provided by BlackBerry-owned Scoreloop.

Microsoft is also touting how easy it is for mobile developers to transition into its ecosystem, but — this is both a positive and a negative for Redmond — the discoverability gap versus BlackBerry 10 is huge. Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 are the newest members of a big family, including the proven powerhouse Xbox 360 and its accompanying Xbox Live Marketplace, not to mention Windows 8’s backward compatibility with innumerable PC games. Meanwhile, BlackBerry 10 is a nascent OS currently available on just one device, the Z10.

Efforts to bridge that device gap include some monetary incentives for BB10 developers, like the (now ended) “10K Commitment” that promised early-adopter devs up to $9,000 in free money if they couldn’t reach $10,000 in revenue in their first year on BB10. There’s also a first-mover advantage, Jeppsson added, because the OS is barely two months old. In other words, it’s easier for a game to break out on a non-Google and non-Apple platform because, at least for now, the pickings are slimmer.

Jeppsson said he’s been working on developer outreach since he came to Research In Motion in 2012, when RIM acquired Jeppsson’s user interface design company, The Astonishing Tribe. He claimed “many” developers are making more money with BB10 than they are on iOS.

But the devil’s in the details, and one of the biggest questions is, what proportion of BlackBerry 10 users are frequently playing games on their new Z10s? A company representative said she would try to find out last week, but did not respond to a follow-up request for numbers. (“Frequently” is important, because players who download games, open them once and never come back are near worthless for the free-to-play mobile developers that dominate the charts on other operating systems.)

Lack of specific numbers isn’t stopping Jeppsson from some good old-fashioned competition bashing when it comes to attracting developers from outside BlackBerry’s ecosystem.

“I think BlackBerry users are actually users that are willing to pay for quality content,” he said. “They expect a quality experience. They’re not going to sideload stuff and pirate it like Android [users], stealing software.”

However, he added that his newest goals are less about developer outreach and more about making the case that the consumer’s gaming experience is better on his side of the fence.

His hope is that, as phone hardware continually improves (“This is easily an Xbox One in terms of what it can do,” he said, holding up a Z10), users will be able to play the same games as consoles, so that a game started on the bus can be finished on the couch.

Again, Microsoft is preaching a similar message. But although it already has the console side of the equation worked out, its cross-platform games are more casual than the more complex hardware-constrained games Jeppsson aspires to pair with BlackBerry — or, indeed, run entirely on his phone.

“Why would you want to buy a big PC to play Counter-Strike, where you remove all the details anyway because you want 60 frames per second?” he said. “That’s how I play Counter-Strike.”

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