Microsoft Balanced Scorecard

James has now noticed I exist.  I have also noticed he has a post about What You Measure is What You Get and this neatly links into to my post on balanced scorecard theory i.e. If you only focus on one outcome you will achieve that but it is often at the expense of other equally important things. 

imageApplying this to another topical Microsoft offering, Halo 3, we get some interesting usage stats and no doubt there will be uproar that the kill count is a on there and more uproar that this is currently standing at over 1.6 billion!

Of course there isn't a lot else to do in Halo 3 but this is only one indicator of success and taken on it's own it could mean the game is too easy which mean that players get bored and go elsewhere.  The other indicators show that people are still on line after the initial launch and this is good for continued success of the game.

Money is one of the most popular indicators. Much has been made in the press about how Halo 3 revenues compare to Spiderman3 or Harry Potter so that's good too. 

It's also important that the X-Box is doing as well as this will underpin future success.  The indicators here are the add-ons that are bought and the average number of games per console sold.

So by looking beyond the body count we can see that all looks well for the Master Chief.

Technorati tags: Balanced Scorecard, halo, xbox, KPI