Ten years ago today, Xbox launched in the US, kickstarting Microsoft's entry into the console race. Today, its path to a more or less equal footing with Sony's PlayStation seems assured, but at the time, it was anything but. But with hindsight, bold hardware specification that saw it being equipped with a network port, aggressive marketing and asute game publishing are all part of the reasons why Xbox has succeeded in ways many would never have believed in 2001.
Chris Lewis, now vice president of Microsoft's Europe, Middle East and Africa entertainment business, has worked at Microsoft for nearly 22 years, and has been involved in Xbox's rise since its start, when he ran Microsoft's consumer division in the UK. Then, Microsoft's experience with gaming was pretty much Flight Simulator and Sidewinder joysticks. We spoke to Lewis, pictured above at Xbox's UK launch, about his experience of its birth, maturation and future.
Xbox was a pretty big break with Microsoft's core business and culture - was there initially any resistance towards the project?
I don't remember huge resistance. There was a lack of understanding as to what was necessary to make a success in this business, such as the need for us to boundary the business sufficiently. For instance to boundary the brand to appeal to a new audience, which at the outset was the gaming community. The necessary brand work we had to do back then was to some extent challenging to our corporate brand work and therefore required a level of trust and empowerment for the division to do what was necessary. So I wouldn't call it resistance. I think it was just a lack of understanding and a need to quickly appreciate that some of the things we needed to do back then - and indeed ever since - to appeal to this audience have been somewhat different.
At what point did it become safe to associate Microsoft's name with Xbox?
We did very much want to appeal to the gaming community and as such the brand needed to stand very deliberately as the Xbox brand. That's not because we were ashamed of our heritage in any way, but we were coming from a standing start in an industry dominated by Sega, Nintendo and Sony, and people had a level of scepticism about our long term chances, our pedigree and our appetite for the fight. We had some experience on the PC, but Xbox was entering was a highly competitive space and we knew we had to quickly appeal to that core audience that would then talk positively about us and what was coming.
Chris Lewis today
What do you remember about the launch itself?
If I remember back to the launch [in March 2002], standing at midnight in the Virgin Megastore on Oxford Street, with Richard Branson and Jonathan Ross, and handing over that first console, the anticipation and excitement was enormous. I think back to that point there were a couple of things that defined us. Undoubtedly, one was what we saw as our killer app, if you'll excuse the pun, but it's what Halo represented for us back then. It became part of what is a $2 billion entertainment franchise. While we were positive about what it stood for, we had no idea it would evolve in the way it has. So that plus the work we were doing with thirdparty publishers back then was growing rapidly, particularly Ubisoft and Splinter Cell, another defining game for Xbox that really allowed us to establish the platform in a powerful way.
Would the Chris Lewis of ten years ago, in his heart of hearts, have been surprised to know how Xbox took off?
I think while we knew we wanted to stand for entertainment broadly, we were focused on the core gaming community. That said, there was an Ethernet port on the back of that box, and we had a vision for what that connected world of online gaming would mean in the future. There were a number of key individuals in the company who had that foresight to architect the Xbox with online gaming at its core. What was the Chris Lewis, who had more hair back then, thinking about? I was incredibly excited and confident in the company's appetite - we don't do things by halves.
But I also knew we had to establish ourselves quickly, because it would define how our partners would come to work with us, whether development or entertainment partners. But we were agile - we were first with many things we were proud of. So I was confident we had the appetite for it. Could I have seen us here in ten years time? No. Did I think we would have 57 million Xbox 360s out there and growing? No, I probably wouldn't have guessed we'd have that much momentum. But we were in for the long term and that it was a marathon, not a sprint.
Comments
10Ten years. It's mad when you associate your life line with the appearance of certain consoles. Ten years ago I was 19, probably queuing in Game at this very moment waiting anxiously to play that game EDGE gave it's rarest of awards to - a [10]. Good times.
I'm happy I''ve been here throughout the years to see all these events come to pass. Snes launch, PS launch, N64, Dreamcast ect. Yup, good times indeed.
I brought a launch xbox and xbox 360. I loved how Microsoft were taking care of the core gamers and going above and beyond the competition.
Now I feel betrayed by the company as they continue to shift focus to casual market with Kinect. Where is the next gen console? Where is the blu-ray/high capcity drive? Where are the first part core new IP exclusives?
Can't help but feel that the magic of those past launches won't be relived with what comes next.
STILL looking forward to how they are going to appeal to the core gamer with Kinect.
Block manipulating puzzle games with finger tracking?
Come on, do me a Rubic's Cube tech demo.
Command & Conquer? Red Alert? Supreme Commander?
PLEASE???? 8'@
Despite fairly mediocre sales there was a lot to love about the original Xbox. It's extra graphical grunt made multiplatform games come alive that bit more than they could on PS2 and I have fond memories of a summer spent in my student flat with Doom 3 and the glorious Outrun 2.
The machine's successor has poisoned gaming culture for me however, turning our hobby into something dominated no longer by passionate geeks but by lowest common denominator fratboys and yobs.
Had Xbox remained as a sort of niche brand with a hardcore cult following, our hobby wouldn't be the brown, soulless, FPS dominated wasteland it is today.
"Had Xbox remained as a sort of niche brand with a hardcore cult following, our hobby wouldn't be the brown, soulless, FPS dominated wasteland it is today."
I think it would.
Brown games may have been on the way since the late 90s but when Sony dominated, they appeared alongside a massive and varied game library that covered every genre, from yobbo fodder like GTA to fascinating obscurities such as LSD Dream Emulator. Games like The Last Guardian would be unlikely to appear on an Xbox console as there'd simply be no market for them.
My mindset is hardly unusual in the gaming world and the feeling that the 360's success is synonymous with a drop in standards in video games is quite common, as are feelings that the aggressive, machismo attitudes associated with the 360 userbase have been of detriment to gaming culture.
Don't get me wrong, there is a place for fratboy games, some of them I even enjoy from time to time, but if the next Xbox were to do a PS2 and dominate hardware sales, there won't be room for anything else.
I think you are confusing the success of xbox with the failure of japanese dev's to move with the times. You cannot blame a hardware platform for a developer issue.
I think you're being a bit naive here to be honest. Well before the original xbox appeared there were thriving online communites for FPS games like Battlefield and Counterstrike. And the Counterstike community in particular was quite aggressive and full of those machismo attitudes. The idea that the 360 somehow created this frat boy culture of aggressive trash talking in FPS games is daft, it already existed it's just visible on consoles now due to the extensive online capabilities they now have.
You could also argue the only reason it's more obvious on the 360 than the PS3 is that everyone who has a 360 has a mic unlike PS3 owners, and that the 360 has a vastly superior and more popular exclusive online FPS in Halo.
Really? What on earth makes you assume that? And what other games like that are available on the PS3?
It's funny as well that the brownest, most generic and dumb FPS of this generation in Killzone 2 is actually a PS3 exclusive.
Killzone 2 is indeed brown, generic and utterly crap, but it is also viewed with apathy or in many cases outright derision by all but the most blinkered Sony fanboys.
360 didn't create those attitudes but the manner in which its software library focussed so strongly on games for the brosef audience ensured that when the 360 became popular, such attitudes moved from the periphery to the mainstream of gaming. Cliffy B sums it up for me, the embodiment of Xbox culture, a messiah to the hardcore fanboys, and a man who once cited the ability to blow out a man's anus as a major selling point in one of his tawdry games.
The Last Guardian is just not a 360 style game. The console is marketed almost squarely at the type of people who have no interest in it. PS3 is hardly a Mecca for innovative titles either but supporting these more leftfield titles has always been more consistent on Sony platforms (admittedly only marginally this generation)
Microsoft's success since late 2005 co-incided with a long and steady decline in standards, innovation, and a poisoning of gamer culture. While it may be wrong to fully blame Microsoft for this, the fact is that many gamers feel the soul has been ripped out the industry these past few years and associate this decline with the 360 calling cards of space marines, military FPS games and foul-mouthed online shootouts.
With Sony haplessly trying to chase the fistbump crowd in order to claw back the arrogant mistakes they made in the mid 2000s, and Nintendo at a worrying crossroads, I fear this situation will get worse before it gets better.
But back on topic, I loved the first Xbox, when space marines, military FPS and online trash talk were all new, exciting and different.
You are probably just getting older, everything seems shitter then :)