Contents

Foreword

About This Book

Acknowlegments

Prologue—The Boardroom

Part I: Betting Billions

1.    Back to “Normal”

2.    “It Could Never Happen Here”

3.    Other Microsoft Initiatives

4.    The Executive Retreat: March 1999

5.    A Real Danger Emerges

6.    “Bill” Meetings

7.    Under New Management

8.    Changing Vision

9.    Or We Could Just Buy Someone?

10.  “Hail Mary”

11.  The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre

12.  Inconceivable

13.  The GDC Reveal

14.  It’s a Go! Now What?

15.  Xbox ATG

16.  The Xbox OS

17.  Early Reveal

18.  Launch Titles

19.  Third-Party Titles

20.  Marketing Xbox

21.  Hardware—A Rocky Finish

22.  Pre-Launch

23.  Midnight Madness

24.  Xbox—the First Year

Part II: Xbox Gets Connected

25.  Early Live Visions

26.  Developing Xbox Live

27.  Completing Xbox Live

28.  Promoting Xbox Live

29.  Xbox Live Beta

30.  Xbox Live Launch

Epilogues

The Team

Author’s Postscript