ote”>On February 12, 2001, Blakely demonstrated the Xbox game in New York
(About the same time, at a tourist attraction near the Canadian border, 47 Microsoft executives including co-founder Bill Gates held an annual team building )
Rich Thompson(first person in charge of Xbox): There is such an event on team building, Each participant wrote a question on a piece of paper, and then put the paper on his chest so that everyone else could see it. If you think your question is not interesting, you can give up and stand behind the person with the most interesting idea. I remember when the event was about to end, 15 colleagues stood behind me, including Bill Gates. My question is probably, what would happen if the world’s largest cable company, Internet provider, and game console company merged into one?
Robby Bach(second person in charge of Xbox): Bill Gates thought about Research on the topic of architecture, but no one wants to discuss with him, so I decided to come to our group to talk. We talked for hours about whether Microsoft should develop a game console, and he thought it was worth a try.
Thompson: According to Sony’s vision, every family may have three or four PSs, and no computer is needed. You can’t tell Ballmer the news, because that guy will definitely fight back, and everyone in the Windows department thinks “this is not good.”
Steve Ballmer(President of Microsoft, about to become CEO at that time): The theory I believe in Yes, there should be a computer on every table in every household, and Windows is everywhere.
Thompson: By May, there were teams within the company competing with each other, developing and adopting different methods. We built some crazy demos for Bill.
(ong>Fries: When we looked at Illard, he also seemed to be frightened and said nothing. I tried to explain the situation, Bill told me to shut up, then Robbie wanted to speak, and Bill yelled at him again. Then Ellard finally recovered and began to defend the team’s decision. At the same time, Ballmer has been watching the slides and saw those huge red numbers, so he went on to say us, because Xbox will make Microsoft lose a lot of money.
Ballmer: I had been CEO for a month and entered a new model. My thinking is that this matter should be decided by me, not Bill.
Fries: Until 7 o’clock in the evening, we were thinking that not only had we been trained for a few hours, but we had to miss the planned dinner with our partner, so we returned home. Have to deal with a lot of trouble.
Ballmer: Before that meeting, I thought I would make the first big decision as CEO. In addition, I was not in a good mood at the time, because my father had cancer-he passed away a week after the meeting. I feel pressured and hope to handle everything wisely.
Bach: There was no progress in the discussion at the meeting. So I asked Ballmer, since no one can convince anyone, then give up. If you are really worried about this, stop. Of course, this has caused another concern-Sony wants to let the PS2 enter the living room and call it a computer. What should we do?
Fries: A VP who has been very quiet asked the question “What about Sony?” I remember his words quieting the room for a second, and then Bill began to say to himself “Yes, what about Sony?” Bill turned his head and asked Ballmer, who also said “What about Sony?”
After a while, Bill said “I think we should go on.” Ballmer said, “I think so too.” Then they said, “We will approve this plan according to your requirements and provide everything you want. You want a market budget of $500 million, and you want to move to another office building without being disturbed by others.” The whole process is quite fast, maybe only 5 minutes before and after.
Bach: Steve said, “Well, that’s it, Bill and I will always support you.”
Fries: Robbie and I walked out of the meeting room together., The communication was entirely oral, without writing any documents. After about an hour, I made up my mind. My team’s mission is to make the best fighting game in the world, so we need Xbox. Xbox’s performance is equivalent to 4 to 6 times that of PS2.
Thompson: Once, I flew to Japan to meet with an executive from Konami. Everyone warned me that that guy is a big alcoholic. He brought an interpreter because he didn’t understand English at all, and that night, we drank a box of Asahi beer and a bottle of brandy…I went back to the hotel at 4 in the morning and again at 9 in the morning. When I ran to meet the executive, he himself came, but the translator did not appear. He sat across the table, leaned forward and shook hands with me, and then left, presumably saying “The deal, count me.”
(The Xbox team also hopes to use Microsoft’s rich financial resources to sign exclusive games and have tried to acquire multiple companies)
Bob McBrin(Head of Business Development): The first company we contacted is EA , Was rejected, and then we went to Nintendo.
Bacchus: Ballmer asked us to meet with representatives of Nintendo to see if they would consider being acquired. They leaned forward with a smile. You can imagine that in a meeting of about an hour, the other party laughed at you all the time.
Mcbryn: In January 2000, we invited people from Nintendo to discuss the details of establishing a joint venture. We will provide Nintendo with all the technical parameters of the Xbox. We think that compared with Sony PS, Nintendo’s hardware sales are not good, so we said, “Listen, you guys are better at making games, why don’t you leave the hardware business to us”, but Nintendo did not agree.
Ballmer: I remember I like their content.
Howard Lincoln(President of Nintendo North America):Nintendo will not discuss confidential conversations with other companies . In any case, these conversations yielded no results.
(Microsoft also tried to acquire Square, the publisher of the “Final Fantasy” series, and Midway Games, the developer of “Mortal Kombat”)
Mcbrlin: We wrote a letter of intent to acquire Square. In early November 1999, we went to Japan and had dinner with the CEO of the other party. Steve Ballmer also Present. The next day, Square told us in the conference room that “Square could not complete this transaction because the price was too low”, and then we packed up and went home.
Bacchus: We also talked to Midway. Midway desperately wants to be acquired, but it is difficult because it means they need to withdraw from the PS business immediately, and we don’t need their sales and marketing teams. In this way, they can’t bring us much value.
The best acquisition in Microsoft history
(However, Microsoft seized an unexpected acquisition opportunity. The acquisition target was Bungie, a well-known computer game developer, who was making a Shooting game “Halo”)
Fries: A few months before the Valentine’s Day when we were criticized by Bill Gates and Ballmer, we suddenly received a call from Bungie’s Executive Vice President Peter Tamter , Peter told me on the phone that Bungie was in financial trouble and Take-Two was interested in acquiring them.
Matti O’Donnell(Bungie composer):Steve Jobs has returned Apple, and the first public display of “Halo” at the 1999 MacWorld conference. Next, we began to hear rumors about Xbox and also knew that PS2 was about to come out. I remember that I talked with Bungie’s co-founders Jason Jones and Alex Seropian about “Can we release “Halo” on the console”, but our idea was to launch the game for PC first, and then decide Whether to bring it to the host platform.
Hamilton Chu, the lead developer of “Halo”, Michael Evans, director of multiplayer games, and Alex Seropian, CEO of Bungie (From left to right)
Alex Seropian(Bungie co-founder and CEO):Bungie as an independent The studio continues to grow, and we like the mentality of defeating the strong with the weak. An anti-system culture has formed within the company. Although it is not deliberately opposed to Microsoft, it is indeed completely different from Microsoft’s culture.
O’Donnell: On the first night of the first demonstration of “Halo” at E3, I flew to Los Angeles with the only DVD version of the game. Alex Seropian was very happy. After the VIP presentation behind closed doors, Alex pulled me aside and said, “Marty, I know this sounds a bit crazy, but Microsoft proposes to buy us.”
Seropian: I will not lie. The reason why we accept the acquisition by Microsoft does have economic motives. But you know, our stage in the game industry has been relatively small before, and we were fascinated by the future idea of making a flagship product.
Bacchus: Midway CEO Neil Nicastro sent me a voice mail saying that we are the stupidest people in the entire industry. Neal told me that he understands that we might not want to buy Midway, but why buy a PC game developer? People from Microsoft Japan also said, “We won’t even release “Halo” because everyone knows that first-person perspective games do not perform well on the console. This is like an unbreakable law of physics.”
O’Donnell: We moved to Microsoft headquarters in 2000 and lived in a temporary dormitory in Redmond, right next to the residence of Expedia employees. Expedia is an online travel company owned by Microsoft. The cultures of the two companies are too different. Bungie is a group of crazy game programmers or artists, while the people at Expedia are serious and follow the rules, just like a group of historians. We renovated our residence and said, “We will put an electronic lock on the door, and only Bungie employees can open it.” We didn’t even give the keys to Fleis.
Seropian: I remember one day, Fries walked into the office and asked me “how are you preparing for E3?” My answer was “I don’t think we should go “. He said again, “Wait, did you just hand me a grenade? We can’t help but go.” Later, we did participate in the E3 exhibition, but the situation was not very good.
Fries: The images we show on the machine can only run at half speed…Bungie chose to demonstrate the multiplayer gameplay of “Halo” because they think multiplayer gameplay It’s unique and cool, and very interesting for the audience. But from a performance point of view, this is also one of the most difficult things to do.
Bach: After returning from the E3 show, the Bungie team said, “Please go away. Don’t bother us, no one can watch this game. We don’t want anyone to participate. Let’s finish it.” Fleis also agreed that “no one is allowed to talk to them.”
Seropian: At some point, we do feel that “Halo” is very good and will become a game that we are proud of.
Bach: When the project was nearing completion, they stepped out of the cocoon and began to show the game to some influential people. This made us suddenly realize “Oh my God, we already have a masterpiece”!
Fries: Inside the company, we like “Halo” very much. But no one knows what will happen when it is released.
Aaron Greenberg(Head of Business Planning): I performed all the first games on Xbox Forecast, I feel that the sales of “Halo” is unlikely to be too