Although Microsoft has struggled to penetrate some youthful components of the technology marketplace such as music and smartphones, its Xbox remains one of its most popular innovations. This paper reviews the history of the creation of the Xbox, with a focus on the unique technology that enabled Microsoft to rival Sony. Today Microsoft's Kinect technology is now hoped to attract underdeveloped components of the gaming market.
¶ … technology of the Xbox game console:
R&D, marketing, manufacturing, innovation, and finances
Microsoft launched its first Xbox in 2001. The device was large, clunky, and panned by many technology critics at the time (Takahashi 2011:1). However, the Xbox proved to be an important milestone for the Microsoft Corporation. For a long time, Microsoft had been seen as the stodgy counterpart to Apple's sleek designs. The Xbox made Microsoft 'cool' again and offered the company a way to gain cache amongst younger consumers. "Now that box is a gateway to internet services, from online games to streaming video. The Xbox Live online gaming service, launched a year after the Xbox in 2002, represents Microsoft's greatest achievement in the social market that has become key to engaging users for the long-term" (Takahashi 2011:1). Today, a critical feature of the Xbox's popularity is the existence of an online service that can be easily updated and is more responsive to the needs of gamers. "It played an important role in making gaming a mainstream form…while Sony and Nintendo still are formidable rivals, the Xbox remains one of the major players in the gaming market" (Takahashi 2011: 1).
At the time of the Xbox's creation, Sony dominated the gaming market with an over 47% market share (Takahashi 2011: 1). However, the developers at Microsoft generated several new technological innovations that made the Xbox possible. The first was DirectX, which "enabled 3D software to run on a computer. DirectX would make it easy for game makers to create 3D games without having to port their games to every single graphics card that could be plugged into a PC" (Takahashi 2011:1). In the past, Microsoft's efforts in the gaming market had been criticized for giving insufficient attention to the needs of game creators: this time, Microsoft staged meetings between the developers of the Xbox and major players in the industry at every phase of the Xbox's creation. From the beginning, the aim was to create a "PC imbued with the attributes of a console" which would have the potential to upgrade and to download in a manner that its rivals could not and offer an "easier architecture and programming model than the proprietary game consoles" (Takahashi 2011:2). Microsoft CEO Bill Gates approved the prototypical concept because he wanted a flagship game console that could support Windows. "But eventually, the Xbox model morphed into a pure console model," much to Gates' chagrin (Takahashi 2011:3).
Gates was also unhappy that the machine could only be supported by an Ethernet- high-speed internet device and would not support a dial-up modem, which he feared would limit the machine's appeal. However, the Ethernet proved to be a critical innovation, given that it enabled the 'downloadable' and 'updatable' features that made the Xbox so unique, in comparison to its major competitors at the time. In later incarnations, Microsoft offered a feature called "Xbox Live. Subscribers have the unique experience of interacting with other gamers, streaming media, and even buying add-ons to games. This differentiation strategy has proven extremely successful, and even in the recession has a record number of sales" (Field, Patterson & Cyndecki 2009).
Microsoft's Xbox team, by virtue of listening to the needs of PC developers, was able to introduce specific innovations that were attractive to game developers. For example, the PIX, or Performance Investigator for Xbox, "allowed a developer to have an unheard-of level of introspection into why a part of the game was or wasn't working. They could pause the game, focus on something as small as a pixel, and see the entire sequence of computations that led to the pixel showing up on the screen at that particular time. No one else had created such a tool" and PIX acted as a motivator for many developers to create specific, new games for the emerging device (Takahashi 2011:5).
The Xbox was released around the time of the attacks upon the Twin Towers. This was initially feared to be a potential disaster for the company, given the disdain for frivolity at the time and consumer wariness about spending money. However, despite the somberness of the mood nationally and internationally, the games on the new console were appealing to gamers looking for something light and fun to divert their attention from the serious events around them. "Halo, the sci-fi shooting game from Bungie, turned out to be the smash hit on the Xbox…which had everything from haunting, pulse-pounding music to stunningly beautiful scenes and breathtaking combat" (Takahashi 2011:6).
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