…A gaming centre?
Microsoft might do worse than to take a leaf out of some of the older gaming companies for its stores. In the 1990’s FASA had a huge hit with their Battletech Centre. Not only did it draw people from around the world to play games there but spun off a number of other locations and highly profitable competitions. Microsoft certainly has the gaming properties to make this work and it would be able to position itself ahead of both Sony and Nintendo if it did this.
Conclusion
The main premise of the announcement by Microsoft is around the opening of their new retail stores and if they hope to compete with Apple in the wearables and phone market they need to accomplish three things.
The first is customer friendly stores, that deliver a service that is as memorable as the Apple stores. The second is devices that blow people away and become aspirational, something that lies at the very heart of Apple’s success. Third while the devices coming out might be exciting, they need an App store that actually has apps to fulfil that excitement. One can only hope that one of the announcements on October 6th delivers this.
Interestingly Microsoft are focused not just on opening the stores in Sydney and New York but as part of their CSR are also supporting local organisations. They have announced that $5 million in software and technology grants are being made to select local organisations and part of the opening ceremony will be to acknowledge the work done by these organisations.
