Current Events > The origin of Xbox is pretty fascinating

(+) Yeah! (+)

Ninja-Yatsu posted...

I wonder what would've happened if the Dreamcast and Playstation were merged into one console.

World peace would be achieved and the second coming of Christ
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tag

Romulox28 posted...

Ninja-Yatsu posted...

I wonder what would've happened if the Dreamcast and Playstation were merged into one console.

World peace would be achieved and the second coming of Christ

Pretty much.
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StormSignal posted...

tag

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Lonestar2000 posted...

Darmik posted...

Not at all. They pushed forward online gaming and digital distribution for smaller scale games. That's a huge benefit.

They are responsible for for DLC, one of the worst things to happen to gaming.

The Atari 2600 had a service where you could download games with a modem.
Redneck Rampack on PC had a day one paid DLC that only added more cursing to the game, years before the Xbox.
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Lonestar2000 posted...

Darmik posted...

Not at all. They pushed forward online gaming and digital distribution for smaller scale games. That's a huge benefit.

They are responsible for for DLC, one of the worst things to happen to gaming.

I too hate the completely optional purchasing of DLC. I personally don't like it either so I agree that nobody should have the option since we don't like it.

High 5!
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Yeah what the hell is wrong with DLC itself?

It can be abused, but the idea of DLC on the whole is nothing but good.
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My first memory of DLC was an extra coop campaign in Splinter Cell Chaos Theory. It was great!

The benefits of DLC have always outweighed the negatives. It could have been done a lot worse without Microsoft too. That stuff before about a united ecosystem? That might not be a thing if Microsoft didn't set that standard. At the very least we might have waited a lot longer for that to be a thing.

But that's the end of the book! It stopped at the Xbox Live launch. I thought Volume 2 would go further on but it actually goes backwards to the DOS days.
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Well tell us about volume 2 anyway
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Would people be interested in that? Seems to be about the rise of DirectX and how that eventually lead to the Xbox. I don't think it will have any of the business side of things.

I'll do it if people want me to. I think it will primarily be about Windows games in the 90's.
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id be interested, yeah
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Def interested
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Eh why not. Afterwards maybe I'll start posting the interesting articles I've found about the behind the scenes stuff of Xbox and it's games

- Microsoft's first game was an unlicensed version of Colossal Caves called Microsoft Adventure. A text adventure game.
- Thier first official game was Microsoft Flight Simulator. It was already a series which Microsoft got the rights to. According to the Guinness World records in 2012 it's the longest lasting video game series.
- Flight Simulator was used to test Intel compatibility all the way until windows 7
- Microsoft rejected publishing Zork because they already had an adventure game. They didn't think people wanted another one. Bill Gates later told the developer if he knew this he would have overridden the decision and "if I had gotten my hands on it you would have never got it back"
- Microsoft in the early 90's was very competitive. Your job was to create a plan, determine a direction, find an opportunity and convince others. If you were in a meeting with Gates and he asks you a question about your plan/product and you didn't know the answer you would fail.
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Lets step back in time and have a look at how the fanboy culture was around the Xbox back around its launch. I always find these fun to look back on.

Here are the reasons the XBOX will destroy the Piece of Shit Station
2:
1. The PoS2 only has 4 megs VRAM. That's a fucking joke in this day
and age! The XBOX has 64 megs VRAM. 16 times as much! XBOX games will
look 16 times better because of this.

2. The PoS2 doesn't do anti-aliasing. The XBOX has FSAA. PoS2 games =
jaggy pieces of shit. XBOX games = gorgeous, jag-free masterpieces.

3. The PoS2 is a bitch to develop for. The only emotion that the
"emotion engine" is giving developers is frustration! They'd rather be
programming for the Saturn! The XBOX is a dream to develop for.
Couldn't be easier! A six year old could make an XBOX game.

4. MS will spend $500 million on advertising. XBOX ads will be
everywhere! Everyone will want one. The ad campaign will result in
millions of sales.

5. The PoS2 is losing third-party support left and right. Developers
are dropping the system like a hot potato and flocking to the XBOX,
which is more powerful, easier to program for, and has lower license
fees. The XBOX has a ton of Japanese support! All the major third
parties are getting on board. The next generation of major third-party
games will all be XBOX exclusive. The PoS2 will have nothing left!

The XBOX is going to be the best system ever! It will rightly kill off
the Piece of Shit Station 2, and gamers everywhere will rejoice!

Sony = new prisoner Microsoft = big shirtless man waiting in cell

"For the crime of killing the Dreamcast by selling your inferior
console based on lies and hype, Sony, I sentence you to PRISON!"
On November 15th, the guards took Sony to a cell where a big shirtless
man (Microsoft) was waiting! Sony's a little guy, about 5 feet, and
scrawny! Microsoft is about 7 and a half feet tall and 350 lbs of
solid muscle! As soon as the guards left, Microsoft was all over
Sony's ass! This has happened every day since November 15th! AND I
HELPED MAKE IT HAPPEN BY BUYING AN XBOX! Once Microsoft's monopoly is
in place in the video games market, the ass rape will never stop! I
LOVE IT!

Looking through this old stuff I found some NPD figures around launch.

Sony sold 1.4 million units of the PlayStation 2 in the United States in the fourth quarter through Dec. 8, according to sales figures tallied by NPD and compiled in a report released by Credit Suisse First Boston. Microsoft trailed slightly, selling 934,000 copies of its Xbox through Dec. 8. Nintendo came in a more distant third with 615,000 units of its GameCube console.

Some other interesting observations
- People asking when GTA3 is coming. Hoping it would release early 2002.
- People debating was a AAA game is (this must have been awkward to define back then)
- The hardware failure concern was the Xbox locking up. That seems pretty standard so I guess it was a pretty solid launch hardware wise
- People asking if they need a memory card

Xbox had a pretty good start but nothing was stopping the PS2 train.
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It's not just Xbox fans being obnoxious about the PS2 though

It's so childish to see all ppl here in this group fight phantoms over who's
best. My guess is, over 90% of all posters here are payed by microsoft for
wich in return they post all this crap here and in PS2 newsgroups.
what's the average age of a poster in this newsgroup anyway?

grow up tads, within a half year you dwarfs will be begging mercy after the
xbox will have failed in such way only microsoft deserves.

i just can't believe that honest and clever ppl would post such nonsense in
favor of a company like microsoft. microsoft has never made anything
theirselves. this is the way M$ develops hardware/software:

1 steal/copy from somewhere
else
2 buy it.

so either you fools here are from M$ already, or you're bought by M$.

how does it feel, to be, like all you fools call it, being "ass raped" by
M$?

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lol what website did you find those from?
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https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!forum/alt.games.video.xbox

It's a bitch to navigate but you can filter the dates. They have stuff for all platforms. It's interesting to go digging in there.
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Pretty interesting read
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- Minesweeper was developed in a weekend
- The original goal was simply to find a path from one corner of the game area to the diagonally opposite corner without getting blown up
- Mouse control was forced because he wanted people to learn how to use it
- One idea was to make the cursor into a boot and when you click on a mine the boot would go bloody. The developer decided to censor himself
- Lots of people got into it including Bill Gates who said "I got 4 seconds on beginner mode is that good?"
- It was bundled with Windows because it was small, took up no resources and was bug free
- There was a cheat code. If you typed XYZZY a small dot appears in the left hand corner that changes from black to white if you hover the cursor over a mine. This cheat worked until Windows 7 due to a code change. You could no longer put anything outside the programs window. Because Minesweepers cheat dot was drawn on the Windows screen, not within the Minesweeper window, it no longer worked.
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Anything about Gorilla.bas yet?
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Foppe posted...

Anything about Gorilla.bas yet?

Nah. The other games mentioned were;
- Reversi
- Space Simulator
- Fish

Googling Gorilla.bas says it's an IBM game so maybe that's why? I think it would have come up by now. If i see it come up I'll post about it! Next section focuses on Microsoft Entertainment Packs.
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Could have sworn that Gorillas, Donkey and Nibbles were made by Microsoft.
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So people way back when had to play on a PC? hmm had to
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ehhwhatever posted...

So people way back when had to play on a PC? hmm had to

This would be when Nintendo and Sega were dominating the console space.
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xbox sucked
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Great topic
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Romulox28 posted...

Great topic

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- The first Windows Entertainment Pack included Cruel and Golf, Minesweeper, Mike Blaylocks Pegged, Norris mahjong tile matching game Taipei, a licensed version of Tetris, Tic Tactics, and a screensaver called Idlewild by Brad Christian.
- There were license issues with Tetris that threatened its inclusion. They decided to put a sticker on the box that said "Now includes Tetris for Windows" just in case their deal fell through. It was approved and finalised at the last possible moment
- Microsoft ported a collection to Game Boy Color. It included Tuts Tomb, TriPeaks, FreeCell, TicTactics, Minesweeper, Life Genesis, and SkiFree.
- They started to market their games with Windows 3.0 Now you can use the incredible power of Windows 3.0 to goof off.
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This is a direct quote from a Microsoft developer so I think it would be okay to paste here. It's an interesting story that foreshadows the App Store.

Steve Jobs, when he introduced the Next machine, he had an event called the Next Day; because it was after a presentation to financial analysts and stuff in New York. On the next day he came to Silicon Valley and pitched to software developers, and I was one of the developers he was pitching to in the audience. And everybody loved the Next operating system and the interface builder and all these wonderful object-oriented libraries. It was using Objective C, which was one of the early dynamic languages. You could do it in Objective C. You couldnt in C++. And everybody was just, Oh, this is such an exciting thing. Im dying to do this. And then he said, Oh, and by the way, all of your software will be delivered on this optical drive that well send to every customer once every three months. And somebody raised their hand and said, What? What? Did you just say that I cant distribute software myself? That I have to distribute my software through you? And Steve Jobs said, Nonononono. Youre thinking of this wrong. Were not taking away from you the freedom to distribute your own software. Were enabling you to not have to worry about software distribution at all. And well only take a 30% cut. And we all stood up and walked out of the room. Almost literally. At that point, we all looked at each other and said, Oh, after you. No, after you. Oh no, no. After you. And nobody wrote for the Next machine because nobody was willing to hand over all their distribution to Steve Jobs and Next. Whats funny is. He always wanted to get a piece of the developers action. He always felt, and Apple has always felt, that application developers were parasites, and that there had to be a way to get a piece of their action. And they finally figured it out with the App Store. With the App Store, theyre skimming the cream off the top. It doesnt matter whether you sell one copy or a million copies. Its like the patent business. Patent attorneys get their money up front, before youve made a dime selling your invention. Its the same way with the App Store. Theyre making their percent on everything that sells, whether it sells one copy or a million copies. -James Plamondon

Nowadays that seems to almost be expected.
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Microsoft was a scary ass company in the 90's. They had a 'art of war' mentality. This stuff was used in anti-trust trials against Microsoft. It was basically their corporate strategy. They called it effective evangelism. They had an evangelist team.

Basically the key points of their plan was;
1. Microsoft's platform will dominate thanks to third party developers
2. They don't 'force' developers to do anything. They use persuasion and psychology to get what they want.
3. Supporting Independent Software Vendors is critical to success...but only if their loyalty and effort is in support of Microsoft
4. If someone is too strong to attack directly or unwilling to cooperate then help their competition instead
5.Be subtle with attacking competition. Disrupt their plans and alliances. Don't attack their strengths
6. Authorities are watching so be ethical and honest. But selectively ethical and honest
7. Selective honesty is like a court case. The prosecution tells truths that help their side and so does the defense. Neither side tells the whole story. Likewise Microsoft should tell the truths that help themselves and hurt the competition

- If Microsoft did something for you it was to further their own interests. Independent Software Vendors were pawns in Microsoft's war against the other guys like Apple
- Microsoft evangelists were often opportunistic and willing to capitalize on mistakes. One guy was going after a company called Intergraph who hated NT. So he found an engineer within the company who was willing to do 'skunkworks' in secret. When Intergraphs's sales were going down then the engineer suddenly unveiled what he was working on
- Microsoft became so powerful that whatever they introduced was basically the standard. At that point it was no longer about coercion and but instead inclusion or exclusion
- An example is the early adopter program. They'd have a new technology to introduce and your company could be given a head start with it. You'd be given direct access to Microsoft and all of their tools. In exchange you'd commit to Microsoft events and they'd co-market your stuff. Of course if you didn't want to do this stuff they'd simply offer it to your competitor instead
- This leads to an environment where it's a bad idea to reject Microsoft. They'd act nice to your face but then suddenly give a huge edge to your competitors
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Interesting topic TC
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Darmik posted...

Microsoft became so powerful that whatever they introduced was basically the standard. At that point it was no longer about coercion and but instead inclusion or exclusion

I just want to say this isn't always true.

This little tidbit here probably does not mean much to non web developers but you can probably appreciate it.

https://webaim.org/blog/user-agent-string-history/
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A Microsoft employee called St John made one hell of a splash. He was a genius guy who figured stuff out quickly and told things how he saw them.

One day he was called by the press. He wasn't briefed on how to handle the press. He told them that Windows was an interior distribution platform.

Bill Gates sent out a company wide emails to all of his executives and was absolutely furious. He called him an idiot that didn't know what he was talking about. St John was convinced he would be fired and typed up the following email.

To: Bill Gates and everybody else on this F**KING thread

Bill Im really sorry if I let you down, I really screwed up, I had no idea how to handle that situation and I said some really stupid things. I absolutely understand if this is my last day at the company. Obviously even if I felt that our publishing technology was obviously inferior to Apples I shouldnt have acknowledged it outside the company.

That said, you dont really believe that Windows is competitive with Apple do you? I dont know who youve been listening to but I absolutely know what Im talking about and Windows is a complete disaster as a publishing platform compared to Apple and absolutely everybody in the industry you hired me to represent knows it. You dont have a single publishing expert here at the company; every single person I have met related to publishing in the technology teams is little more than a 300dpi HP laser printer expert. My credibility with that community wouldnt stand a snowballs chance in hell with that community if you expect me to take the position that Windows is great when everybody but apparently you KNOW otherwise.

He then typed out every single issue.

Bill Gates sent out another email to his executives.

This new guy we hired to be our Publishing Evangelist tells me you people have been lying to me all these years about how great our publishing technology, which has been responsible for our abysmal performance against Apple in this space all along. Id like to know how the issues hes raised are being addressed by your teams going forward.

What a mic drop moment
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People in Microsoft yelled at each other. A lot.

St John made a career of tearing people down publicly and ruining their credibility. Even if they were his boss. He was that good at backing up his shit with facts.

It wasn't just him. Everyone at the company had a story about Bill Gates yelling. It was a part of the culture.

The trick accordingly to St John is yelling with a smile. Like you're enjoying it and asking for them to figure out a defense. This is something that's often not stated in stories about Microsoft.

St John moved to games. Specifically he was the guy who had to figure out transitioning developers away from DOS. Windows 95 was going to break a lot of exisiting DOS games and he had to convince developers to try out DOSBox.

But there was an effort in Microsoft to save incompatible DOS games. It was up to one guy (Raymond Chen) to patch DOS games to work. He did this for thousands of games. He was the hero that let people play Ultima 7 and 8 on Windows 95.
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Darmik posted...

A Microsoft employee called St John made one hell of a splash. He was a genius guy who figured stuff out quickly and told things how he saw them.

One day he was called by the press. He wasn't briefed on how to handle the press. He told them that Windows was an interior distribution platform.

Bill Gates sent out a company wide emails to all of his executives and was absolutely furious. He called him an idiot that didn't know what he was talking about. St John was convinced he would be fired and typed up the following email.

To: Bill Gates and everybody else on this F**KING thread

Bill Im really sorry if I let you down, I really screwed up, I had no idea how to handle that situation and I said some really stupid things. I absolutely understand if this is my last day at the company. Obviously even if I felt that our publishing technology was obviously inferior to Apples I shouldnt have acknowledged it outside the company.

That said, you dont really believe that Windows is competitive with Apple do you? I dont know who youve been listening to but I absolutely know what Im talking about and Windows is a complete disaster as a publishing platform compared to Apple and absolutely everybody in the industry you hired me to represent knows it. You dont have a single publishing expert here at the company; every single person I have met related to publishing in the technology teams is little more than a 300dpi HP laser printer expert. My credibility with that community wouldnt stand a snowballs chance in hell with that community if you expect me to take the position that Windows is great when everybody but apparently you KNOW otherwise.

He then typed out every single issue.

Bill Gates sent out another email to his executives.

This new guy we hired to be our Publishing Evangelist tells me you people have been lying to me all these years about how great our publishing technology, which has been responsible for our abysmal performance against Apple in this space all along. Id like to know how the issues hes raised are being addressed by your teams going forward.

What a mic drop moment

damn that's hilarious
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Gabe, you know that Steam guy, worked at Microsoft to port Doom to Windows 95.
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- QuickTime was a huge issue for Microsoft. Thanks to the way Mac's were designed compared to windows they didn't really have a way to compete. Their answer to that issue? Video games. Apple were ignoring this area
- Windows simply was an awkward experience for games development however. OpenGL was the overall standard. But it had issues. John Carmack was a critic for example. Microsoft wanted a solution.
- WinG was Microsoft's first crack. A Doom demo using WinG turned heads at the time. 60fps! 24 games in 94 used this including Lion King
- Doom was only a demo recreation. They wanted to try out a port with WinG. They made a deal with Carmack to handle the port. St John didn't have any engineering resources so he asked Gabe Newell (who was working on set-top box UI at the Advanced Technology Group) for some staff. Gabe Newell gave him an engineer to handle the port.
- This guy locked himself in an office to work on the port. He was hard to reach. His office was often hot and he was sweaty. He'd get angry if you interrupted him. Anyway this guy ended up overdosing on drugs and died during development. St John was hit with a negative performance report thanks to the delay
- Using the mouse for aiming in Windows 3.1 Doom was slow. There was input delay. It was not a good experience. This lead to the creation of DirectMouse (and eventually DirectInput for Joysticks)
- Windows 95 wasn't designed to play games off the CD-ROM drive. Windows 95 was feature complete too. Luckily they managed to sneak in some extra code to make the AutoPlay CD functionality. Freddi Fish was the first AutoPlay game
- The Doom port was a failure. It couldn't live up to the DOS version. It was filled with audio and network issues. It wasn't published
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- The Microsoft games division were looking into making sports games (including women's soccer). They were expected to rival Madden. The developers said they'd need to release their games on platforms like PlayStation to achieve that. Microsoft said no.
- Fun was a new concept in Microsoft at this point. Programmers didn't need to worry about Word being fun. Creating new games was a challenge
- Microsoft bought the flight simulator developers because Sierra was attempting to buy them
- A lot of thr flight sim developers are still at Microsoft and now work on the Forza series
- The Microsoft games team worked on small little games for the entertainment packs. One of the top guys left to work with Ensemble. Who end up making Age of Empires
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- The Lion King windows game is a major event for Microsoft. Not in a good way. But it eventually leads to the necessity to create Directx
- Lion King was shipped out preinstalled on brand new Presario computers. One million of them. These computers had new video cards and drivers installed which had never been WinG tested. Literally no testing. Nobody even tested Lion King even though it was preinstalled. Turns out if you launched the game it would blue screen the computer
- This was a Christmas launch! Disney, Microsoft and Compaq ruined Christmas for many, many children
- This was early on in Microsoft's push into gaming. They were gaining momentum. They had Disney support! Not to mention Windows 95 is around the corner. This shook them to the core. Remember that Microsoft were convincing developers to use WinG in the first place.
- There was a lot of yelling, screaming and legal threats from Disney. The issue couldn't be put on one person so no one was fired
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- J Allard is the only guy in Microsoft who liked Azurik

lmao
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Darmik posted...

This guy locked himself in an office to work on the port. He was hard to reach. His office was often hot and he was sweaty. He'd get angry if you interrupted him. Anyway this guy ended up overdosing on drugs and died during development. St John was hit with a negative performance report thanks to the delay

this is the most 90s Microsoft thing in the whole topic
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- DirectX began as the Manhattan Project. Developers were excited because they were losing 70% of their revenue on support
- Microsoft went around and simply asked developers what they wanted. Their intention was for The Manhattan Project to be 'crack for developers'
- A lot of developers hated Microsoft. St John was often called Darth Vader. Regardless he went around and asked what they hypothetically wanted and couldn't refuse using
- They got a lot of feedback and it was seen as a great move for developer relations
- They created a manifesto titled Taking Fun Seriously: or How to own PC games in two years, and take a bite out of the home game console market. It was a radical document about the importance and strategic value of hames. Games weren't a priority for Microsoft at the time outside of this team
- The goal was to empower games with Microsoft technology. To target games against Apple

The specific goals for Project Manhattan was to;
- Use Manhattan SDK to enable systems, ACT and consumer
- Kill DOS within two years
- Grow PC revenue against consoles
Some observations;
- Game market is huge
- Console market is in decline and must reinvent itself next year (this was in 1994)
- PC Game market severely repressed thanks to difficulties with installations, piracy and little hardware innovation under DOS

- The document includes terms like 'DOS bumpkins' and 'Apple Maggots'
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- The document was presented to higher ups. The response? Meh. Then Lion King happened. Finally some people started to ask for a solution. This doesn't mean they got permission though. You don't get permission in Microsoft. You do it anyway and hope it pays off so you don't get fired
- So work on the Manhattan Project properly started headed by St John. Without permission from the higher ups. They spent 1.2 million unauthorised money for contactors
- St John still had that Microsoft stigma so he changed the way they approached developers. They didn't want to appear as Microsoft. It was more like an edgy anti-marketing campaign that focused on kicking out Japanese consoles. St Johm angled himself as an enemy of Microsoft corporate management
- At this point DOS games were for hardcore gamers (because they took extra work to get running) and Windows games were for casual gamers. Video games in general still weren't very mainstream in the mid 90's however
- It was too late to include DirectX in windows 95. But they could slip in some hooks to add it in later. This was risky work and could have got them in huge trouble. It was all undocumented.
- The trick with DirectX was that it would basically shut off all of the Windows crap bogging them down. They're essentially turning off Windows to run the DirectX game. Nobody outside the DirectX team knew this.
- A lot of DirectX was designed to correct the mistakes made with the previous Doom port. Doom 95 (or Doom 2? The book calls it both) was the first true DirectX game
- The Manhattan Project was renamed to Windows 95 Game SDK
- St John 'tar babied' the SDK and went too the press with the exciting news. He used a nuclear symbol to represent the new SDK. The press went crazy with a bunch of nuclear bomb drop images that targeted Nintendo and Sony. Microsoft PR weren't happy.
- Because it wasn't an officially supported Microsoft initiative they had to get pledge support from developers and went to a theme park for the reveal instead of GDC. A lot of games weren't working yet and were shown on WinG instead. This event was called Ground Zero
- There was a Beavis and Butthead demo that unfortunately blue screen of deathed. The theatre roared with laughter and DOS chants. Some Microsoft employees put on lab coats and started pulling out cables and put on a show like it was planned
- At this point DOS games were 320x240. Windows games were 640x480 but were slow. DOS developers weren't convinced this would pay off and were there for free food
- The first demo was Super Bubsy. It was smooth. People were blown away. It ran 640x480 in 24 bit colour and 60fps. They turned off vertical blank sync and the game went blurry but started running 500fps. The audience went wild. Graphics this advanced were unseen before
- Following Super Bubsy was WinDOOM running in 640x480 at 60 fps with multi-channel stereo and even a force-feedback joystick. And synchronized sound.
- This was their Steve Jobs moment. Suddenly DOS seemed ancient and DirectX was where developers wanted to be. This advanced PC gaming significantly and you could easily argue that if this didn't happen there wouldn't be an Xbox. Microsoft were now serious about games
- The show ended with $5,000 fireworks
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