As Microsoft prepares to launch the latest version of the Encarta Reference Suite, the company is also developing a new version of a little-known product in the brand: English language instruction.
Encarta Interactive English Learning isn't sold in the United States, although Microsoft is considering potential American editions. The product first rolled out last spring in French- and Japanese-speaking markets. Italian- and Spanish-language versions soon followed, and the company is exploring other languages, including Polish.
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Managing editor Vic Bondi, who is working on updated versions of the product, said it is intended as a refresher course. "It's a product for false beginners, people who have studied English and want a broader background," he said.
Even so, the course takes 90 hours to complete. That time can be chopped up into bite-sized pieces according to students' schedules.
Bondi spent Monday in a studio putting together new videos for the upgrades. Actors are taped in front of a blue screen and their performances are incorporated into videos that show users the meanings and contexts of words. To test their knowledge, students put on headsets and -- using speech recognition and 3-D graphic simulation -- converse with the digitized characters.
"Language is kind of a game in our product just like it is in real life," he said.
Microsoft is greatly expanding its Encarta brand this year with the educational software and the Global English dictionary, which will be released both on CD-ROM and in print. Produced in conjunction with the British publisher Bloomsbury, the new dictionary combines words used in dialects found all over the world and is billed as "World English."
The traditional Encarta Encyclopedia and the dictionary will be released on CD-ROM on 27 August and a DVD will follow on 24 September. In addition, an updated Encarta Africana is slated for late this year. No dates have been set for the new Interactive English Learning.
Microsoft product manager Mark Young said the market for language instruction is much higher overseas, particularly in Japan where the demand for such products is greater than that for encyclopedias.
"It's an international product for an international audience," he said. "It's not an American product that's been localized."
Two time zones away from Redmond, Encarta's competitors at Encyclopedia Britannica are working on the new version of its product, along with a greatly expanded EB.com subscription site that includes a database of news and magazine articles.
Company spokesman Tom Panelas said the Chicago-based company plans to focus on its core assets. The huge, US$1,250 print set, which published its last annual edition in 1998, is set to return in 2001. Britannica does not plan to follow Encarta in broad expansion, however.
"Clearly, they [Microsoft] have a lot of ambitions for the brand," Panelas said. "I don't imagine that they and we will be going in the same direction. I think Encarta's a relatively new brand and still being defined."
Encarta has been successful while other content projects such as Cinemania, Music Central, and Sidewalk have failed because it is easier for Microsoft to sell through its retail channels, said analyst Gary Arlen of Arlen Communications.
"It's a good fit," he said. "It's more valuable because it's less timely. It's not out of date the moment it's pressed."
