Asking Goliath about DVD

I found myself having dinner a couple of weeks ago in the company of my new pal Robert 'Robbie' Bach of Microsoft. Robbie, having escaped from running Microsoft Office, has hung up his taskbars for good and is running the whole of consumer stuff. His proper job title is vice president, learning and entertainment division, but running the whole of consumer stuff is a better description because he has to deal with everything from games to Microsoft Works - via CD-Roms, of course.

This was an excellent opportunity to ask him about Microsoft's plans for DVD. Well, it would have been, but I got far too drunk to do that.

Or I may have asked anyway, but forgotten the answer. Or I may have asked, but been far too drunk to make any sense, in which case Kevin responded with one of Microsoft's official stalling phrases. In retrospect, that may have been what happened.

Me: So whaccchhha fink baht whossname, eh mate?

Robbie (stalling): I'm afraid we don't comment on rumours.

Me: Nah, nah, you got me all wrong. Whoss it all abaht with y'now whossname?

Robbie (stalling): I shall be in the office all day, but I will be in a series of meetings, although I will try to get back to you.

You may ask, who cares about DVD anyway? What we really want to know is, when is Microsoft going to come out with some decent games? There is no immediate answer to this, because Microsoft realised long ago that if it bought a good games company, all the good developers would run a mile - which, in the UK, is about the distance to the nearest rival games developer. So instead, the company is contracting out its games publishing.

If you're a games designer and have spent years building up your credibility, Microsoft may come knocking at your door to say: 'Write us a game. You can still be cool and tell your mates you're only doing it for the money.' This arrangement appears to suit both sides. Mr Bach might find his new job offers more chance of failure than Office, where the biggest challenge was preventing fights between the Word and Excel teams over where to put the taskbar.

After a few whiskies, we all have the potential to ask a Microsoft developer to step outside for a frank and physical discussion on usability, so it's really not so odd. In the consumer world, though, Microsoft's big successes (think Encarta, World Atlas, Flight Sim) pay for a string of financial disasters (Cinemania, Music Central, Wine Guide, Gallery and that one about baseball). Doesn't he wish Microsoft had brought out Quake, I asked in a rare lucid moment.

'You won't find Microsoft bringing out anything like Quake,' he said, 'because it's too violent.'

'But didn't you say you were going to do a fighter pilot version of Flight Sim?' I asked.

'I shall be in the office all day but I will be in a series of meetings, although I will try to get back to you.'

Tim Phillips is a freelance IT journalist.