At the time, GoldenEye 007 for Nintendo 64 had been one of the few hit FPS games to appear on a console, some of other ones being Perfect Dark and Medal of Honor.
In preparation for its launch, Microsoft acquired Bungie and used Halo: Combat Evolved as a launch title. Some of Microsoft's plans proved effective. At the time of Gates' announcement, Sega's Dreamcast sales were diminishing and Sony's PlayStation 2 was just going on sale in Japan.Ĭoncentrating on making a big splash in Japan, Microsoft delayed its European launch, though Europe later proved to be the more receptive market. When Bill Gates unveiled the Xbox at the Game Developers Conference in 2000, audiences were impressed by the console's technology. īill Gates unveiling the Xbox at GDC 2000. Gates stated that a gaming/multimedia device was essential for multimedia convergence in the new times. Microsoft repeatedly delayed the console, which was first mentioned publicly in late 1999 during interviews with then-Microsoft CEO Bill Gates.
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The Xbox was Microsoft's first video game console after collaborating with Sega to port Windows CE to the Sega Dreamcast. However, consumer testing revealed that Xbox was preferred by far over the other suggested names and “Xbox” became the official name of the product. During focus testing, the Xbox name was left on the list of possible names to demonstrate how unpopular the Xbox name would be with consumers. Microsoft’s marketing department did not like the Xbox name, and suggested many alternatives. ĭuring development, the original DirectX box name was shortened to Xbox. Fries decided to support the team’s idea of creating a Windows DirectX based console. The team approached Ed Fries, the leader of Microsoft’s game publishing business at the time, and pitched their “DirectX Box” console based on the DirectX graphics technology developed by Berkes’ team. The team hoped to create a console to compete with Sony's then-upcoming PlayStation 2, which was luring game developers away from the Windows platform. In 1998, four engineers from Microsoft’s DirectX team, Kevin Bachus, Seamus Blackley, Ted Hase and DirectX team leader Otto Berkes, disassembled some Dell laptop computers to construct a prototype Microsoft Windows based video game console.