Game of X Vol. 2 is actually a prequel. It deals with early game efforts at Microsoft like Flight Simulator, Minesweeper, entertainment packs and early acquisitions, but it also is about several additional types of games: the games that Microsoft played against its competitors; the games that people at Microsoft played to get their way and bypass the orthodoxy of the bureaucracy; the games they played against each other in the hallways and in meetings; and finally, the methods of certain members of a certain team, the Developer Relations Group, that took internal and external games to a highly refined level of manipulation.
One of the themes of the Game of X books is that one thing leads to another. In this sense, the practices of personal manipulation and bypassing authoritity led directly to the creation and ultimate success of core technologies that, in turn, led directly to Xbox. This book is full of wild, amusing, absurd, and humorous stories, but all of them are ultimately tied to the final outcome of Microsoft becoming a true player in the industry of games.
AUTHOR’S PREFACE
In its earliest years, Microsoft was not quite sure what it wanted to be when it grew up. With their Microsoft Disk Operating System (MS-DOS), they held the keys to the rapidly emerging personal computer market. While companies like Apple, Commodore, and Atari were creating personal computers, it was the entry of “Big Blue,” with the IBM PC coupled with the transformative spreadsheet Lotus 1-2-3, that started the landslide of personal computer adoption – primarily as work machines. And as IBM PC clones began to proliferate, Microsoft was still in control and DOS was king.
Even so, IBM dwarfed Microsoft, a scrappy startup. But Microsoft’s Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer were ambitious. They were hardly content to own the operating system alone. They wanted to create a company that expanded into different markets. They created their first spreadsheet, called Multiplan, in 1982, which enjoyed some success on the pre-DOS CP/M systems, but was clobbered by Lotus on DOS systems. They released the first Excel spreadsheet on Macintosh in 1985 and the DOS version in 1987 to synchronize with the Mac version. In 1998 they also released the first version of Office with versions of Excel, Word, and PowerPoint – the first version of a suite of business applications destined to become dominant under Windows several years later, and with more than a billion customers to date.
It was definitely a part of Microsoft’s DNA to expand and take over different market segments. Early on, they produced various versions of the BASIC programming language under IBM’s brand and have continued to produce programming and system tools. But in those early days, they also experimented with hardware and publishing, in effect trying things on for size. They even dabbled lightly in games, initially by distributing SubLOGIC’s Flight Simulator.
This book is about people, internal culture, conflict, strategy, courage, and vision—with a good dose of calculated craziness, devious manipulation, outright skullduggery, and accidental successes. It is a book of stories based on the words of the people who lived them. And finally, it is about the forces within and outside of the company that drove Microsoft, reluctantly, to become a major player in the video game industry. It’s about the growth of an industry giant in business software that always found reasons to support a minimal interest in games and ended up risking billions it never planned to spend – on games.
This is Microsoft’s long road to Xbox.
ONLINE APPENDIX
Many original documents, key email threads, and technical details referenced in this book can be found in a special Online Appendix at https://www.crcpress.com/9781138350182. We highly recommend that you explore the various documents in the Appendix.