Microsoft thinks its too early to declare a console war winner, dances around motion-sensing controller talk

A portion of a Wired interview with Microsoft’s Shane Kim…

W: What happens to the Xbox 360 as a platform if it’s only second place in America and not anywhere else?

Well, we’ve always known that we weren’t going to win in Japan, right? And I think we can build a very good business, an exciting business with a pretty big installed base with success in places like North America and Europe. Even though you may not think it’s big numbers, we’re actually strong in Latin America as well. Canada’s been a big market for us as well. So there are ways to get the scale. Now, if you don’t get 10 million units in Japan, can you get to 100 million units overall? I’d love to get 90 million units and have that problem. That’s what we’re really trying to focus on. I think it’s way too early to declare a winner. Some guys were trying to declare Nintendo the winner of this generation last night.

W: You don’t think Nintendo’s…

SK: I think it’s way too early.

W: When can we call it?

SK: When somebody’s well on their way to reaching 100 million units.

W: Now, do you think that when Microsoft releases its own motion-sensing controller, that that’s going to help you guys out in the console wars?

SK: I don’t know, because that’s going to be a long time from now, since we don’t have anything like that under development.

W: You don’t have anything like that under development?

SK: That I can confirm or deny.

W: That you can confirm or deny, I think that’s the…

SK: You know the stock answer. We don’t comment on rumors or speculation.

W: At the same time, you’re not going to flat-out deny that it’s in development.

SK: If you want to say that that means we’re working on something, that’s up to you. Here’s my point about hardware: You know that we’re investing pretty heavily into hardware, online services, and content. And regardless of what that underlying technology is, we’re going to continue to push innovation in a whole bunch of different places. Whether that’s in motion-sensing or some other area, we’ll see.

Sneaky, sneaky answers from Microsoft. Check out the full interview here