Was the Xbox a Failure?

The Xbox was a failure-- at least, that's how Seamus Blackley, the so-called "father of the Xbox" sees it.

In fact, Blackley used those exact words while giving a master class presentation at the University of Texas in 2008. Speaking candidly to game design luminary Warren Spector, a colleague from his days at Looking Glass Studios, Blackley reflected on his hopes and dreams that the Xbox would revolutionize the gaming industry by ushering in a new era of developer-focused technology that would allow game designers to create the games of their dreams.

"But the business of games didn't change, in fact it became more solidified in the sense that fewer interesting games were made than ever after Xbox came out," he said during the presentation. "There are more crappy licensed games than ever; it's the opposite of what we wanted to have happen. I realized that the thing I really cared about, which is the evolution of games as a medium, was almost being inhibited by this."

"Microsoft was afraid of Sony and the noise it was making about the PlayStation 2" -- Dean Takahashi

By these metrics there can be no doubt that Blackley's assessment is accurate. The processing power of the Xbox reinforced the graphical arms race that skyrocketed the cost of games, and made unique creative projects harder to finance than they had ever been in the past. It popularized online multiplayer in consoles which also increased cost of development as more gamers expected a suite of online options.

While Xbox may have failed to live up to the ideological expectations of its creator, the full story of Microsoft's foray into the living room is a more varied mix of success and failure. That will depend largely on your personal view of the industry, but the indelible mark Xbox left on the industry is impossible to deny.

In The Beginning...

The "DirectX Box," as it was known in its infancy at Microsoft (a reference to Microsoft's gaming programming interface, DirectX), was a risky venture for the company, as its primary focus was on PC software. But the tech giant no doubt saw the need to get into the rapidly growing market, if only to keep a newfound competitor at bay.

"Microsoft was afraid of Sony and the noise it was making about the PlayStation 2," says Dean Takahashi, author of Opening the Xbox: Inside Microsoft's Plan to Unleash an Entertainment Revolution. "Back in 1999, Sony executives said the PS2 would be the gateway to home entertainment.

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