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Microsoft may yet go down in history as the last competitor ever to join the console race. Since November 2001, we haven’t seen any mainstream newcomers make a play for the space beneath our televisions – at least, not any that have stuck. It’s easy to gesture at the old Microsoft money hose as the reason, of course, but it’s worth noting that any major tech players with big resources at their disposal have chosen not to follow in Microsoft’s footsteps, choosing instead to come at gaming from different angles: Apple through mobile, Google and Amazon with streaming services, Facebook in VR.
Perhaps the real reason, then, is simply that launching a new console from scratch is bloody hard work. The politicking and subterfuge that led to Xbox’s development have been well documented, not least within these pages – and even once the battle with management had been won, there was the small matter of figuring out how to support it.
“It was really a crazy, chaotic time,” says Bonnie Ross, looking back on the time leading up to launch. “I’m so impressed that we actually ended up launching what we did, because we were all… none of us knew what we were doing.”
Today, Ross is Microsoft corporate vice president and head of Halo developer 343 Industries; back then she was working in Microsoft’s game publishing division, which would eventually come to be known as Xbox Game Studios. She remembers clearly the first time she found out the Xbox project had been greenlit. “We knew it was going on, but I officially heard about it in a bar,” she says. “I was at a social with a bunch of friends, and [Xbox co-founder] J Allard and I were talking. And he said: ‘Hey, have you heard? I’m gonna come over and move into your team, and we’re gonna start working on a new console, and I’m leading it.’”
Circumstances aside, how did she take the news that Microsoft was officially moving into the console space? “I’m
