Give me a moment before I get to the main crux of the title. I promise I'll deliver.
Last year I saw that there were two upcoming books, Game of X v.1 and 2, from Rusel Demaria (who you might recall wrote some of the supplemental material tied to the X-Wing/Tie Fighter games along with founding Prima Guides) about the Xbox and DirectX (volumes 1/2 respectively). I'm a big fan of Dean Takahashi's "Unlocking the Xbox" book that detailed the making of that console so getting a new book about that time, now over a decade later so interviewees could be more open, was very appealing.
Anywho, fast forward to last week where I was pretty surprised to see that both volumes had actually released last year; I ordered myself a copy of the first volume and decided to look around online and see what folk thought of it. Thing is, the only discussion point I saw on the book was a VentureBeat article published on New Years Eve by Dean Takahashi about the book. The article made the book sound pretty exciting but I was still a bit curious at it's complete lack of reception.
Now that I have the book in my hands I'm blown away at its contents just 80 pages in. You have stuff in there that no one has talked about before like the Square deal (OK, Google shows one person teasing it back on GAF) or the meeting Bill Gates had with the chairman/CEO of CSK (owner of Sega), Isao Okawa where Okawa pitched Microsoft on working on a "Dreamcast 2 type thing" instead of the Xbox. Isao Okawa, dying of cancer, wanted to "leave another mark, even posthumously, on technology and Japan" and was willing to go all in on a collaboration. You even get how Nintendo, no matter how incredibly favorable a collaborative deal was, wouldn't work with MIcrosoft for how it would look like they "lost" to them.
Then there's the internal MIcrosoft information like the troubles of merging FASA into MIcrosoft, how the MS Dreamcast team pitched against the Xbox, why Dell turned down an OEM Xbox, Epic pushing hard for the Xbox to use a mouse/keyboard and why that GDC console was in the shape of an X. Again, that's all just a couple things mentioned in the early pages of the book.
The book also includes official charts, powerpoint slides from things like meetings with Bill Gates, early architecture designs and roadmaps, emails from J Allard trying to calm any concerns from Gates and Balmer before the "massacre" of a final meeting that greenlit the Xbox, memos from marketing companies on research on the "X-box" name vs 11-X (along with a bunch of other unused names). All that's just from what I've read so far and by flipping through the nearly 200+ page appendix.
It is insane to me that this book has gotten essentially no coverage or discussion online. If you are at all interested in games I really, really encourage you to pick this up. There's a kindle and physical release on Amazonif you're interested (Canada here). I don't mean to rant and rave but it's incredible stuff for anyone remotely interested in this industry.
_____________
Anyways, to deliver on that title's bait. As mentioned above in 1999 Microsoft had been courting companies for acquisition and SquareSoft came up primarily for getting the Final Fantasy IP. It got to the point, according to Bob McBreen, at the final meeting where the deal was to be signed the CEO of Square stood up and said that "before we sign, our banker would like to say something" to which said banker announced "we want more money" and "...just about doubled the price".
Square's banker explained that the valuation done had some errors. When asked what was missed in the valuation by Microsoft's representatives they were told "You missed that we're worth more money. We want more money". Rick Thompson recalled that "They wanted something like one and a half billion dollars for half of the company" which was more than what Microsoft was willing to spend so both parties walked from the deal.
What a world that would have been, eh?
*I have no relation to Rusel Demaria or these books. I just think it is, at least from what I've read, something that absolutely deserves the attention it hasn't gotten.*
Last year I saw that there were two upcoming books, Game of X v.1 and 2, from Rusel Demaria (who you might recall wrote some of the supplemental material tied to the X-Wing/Tie Fighter games along with founding Prima Guides) about the Xbox and DirectX (volumes 1/2 respectively). I'm a big fan of Dean Takahashi's "Unlocking the Xbox" book that detailed the making of that console so getting a new book about that time, now over a decade later so interviewees could be more open, was very appealing.
Anywho, fast forward to last week where I was pretty surprised to see that both volumes had actually released last year; I ordered myself a copy of the first volume and decided to look around online and see what folk thought of it. Thing is, the only discussion point I saw on the book was a VentureBeat article published on New Years Eve by Dean Takahashi about the book. The article made the book sound pretty exciting but I was still a bit curious at it's complete lack of reception.
Now that I have the book in my hands I'm blown away at its contents just 80 pages in. You have stuff in there that no one has talked about before like the Square deal (OK, Google shows one person teasing it back on GAF) or the meeting Bill Gates had with the chairman/CEO of CSK (owner of Sega), Isao Okawa where Okawa pitched Microsoft on working on a "Dreamcast 2 type thing" instead of the Xbox. Isao Okawa, dying of cancer, wanted to "leave another mark, even posthumously, on technology and Japan" and was willing to go all in on a collaboration. You even get how Nintendo, no matter how incredibly favorable a collaborative deal was, wouldn't work with MIcrosoft for how it would look like they "lost" to them.
Then there's the internal MIcrosoft information like the troubles of merging FASA into MIcrosoft, how the MS Dreamcast team pitched against the Xbox, why Dell turned down an OEM Xbox, Epic pushing hard for the Xbox to use a mouse/keyboard and why that GDC console was in the shape of an X. Again, that's all just a couple things mentioned in the early pages of the book.
The book also includes official charts, powerpoint slides from things like meetings with Bill Gates, early architecture designs and roadmaps, emails from J Allard trying to calm any concerns from Gates and Balmer before the "massacre" of a final meeting that greenlit the Xbox, memos from marketing companies on research on the "X-box" name vs 11-X (along with a bunch of other unused names). All that's just from what I've read so far and by flipping through the nearly 200+ page appendix.
It is insane to me that this book has gotten essentially no coverage or discussion online. If you are at all interested in games I really, really encourage you to pick this up. There's a kindle and physical release on Amazonif you're interested (Canada here). I don't mean to rant and rave but it's incredible stuff for anyone remotely interested in this industry.
_____________
Anyways, to deliver on that title's bait. As mentioned above in 1999 Microsoft had been courting companies for acquisition and SquareSoft came up primarily for getting the Final Fantasy IP. It got to the point, according to Bob McBreen, at the final meeting where the deal was to be signed the CEO of Square stood up and said that "before we sign, our banker would like to say something" to which said banker announced "we want more money" and "...just about doubled the price".
Square's banker explained that the valuation done had some errors. When asked what was missed in the valuation by Microsoft's representatives they were told "You missed that we're worth more money. We want more money". Rick Thompson recalled that "They wanted something like one and a half billion dollars for half of the company" which was more than what Microsoft was willing to spend so both parties walked from the deal.
What a world that would have been, eh?
*I have no relation to Rusel Demaria or these books. I just think it is, at least from what I've read, something that absolutely deserves the attention it hasn't gotten.*
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