How long has XSN Sports been in development?
Kevin Browne: We’ve been working on this idea that eventually became known as XSN Sports for quite a while. We saw with Xbox Live, the commitment the platform made with being online gaming ready right out of the box without Xbox Live even being enabled yet, and we just saw it as an opportunity to change what sports gaming could be all about. Our perspective is that sports video gaming to customers today is mostly single game, is mostly single user, and it’s entirely limited to console. In surveys that we did with actual IGN customers in combination with your site, we found that only 31% of really avid sports gamers play regularly, and that’s more than a couple of times a month, against other people. That means that the majority of your sports gaming time is spent alone against the A.I. It’s not about desire, it’s about opportunity. People just don’t have willing opponents around them all of the time. You can only beat up on your younger brother so much before you just don’t want to pla
