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Microsoft Windows XBox (Games) Games Hardware

Microsoft Considered Giving Away Original Xbox 85

Posted by timothy from the could've-been-a-cue-cat dept.
donniebaseball23 writes While the term 'Xbox' is firmly implanted in every gamer's mind today, when Microsoft first set out to launch a console in 2001, people weren't sure what to expect and Microsoft clearly wasn't sure what approach to take to the market. As Xbox co-creator Seamus Blackley explained, "In the early days of Xbox, especially before we had figured out how to get greenlit for the project as a pure game console, everybody and their brother who saw the new project starting tried to come in and say it should be free, say it should be forced to run Windows after some period of time." Blackley added that other ideas were pushed around at Microsoft too, like Microsoft should just gobble up Nintendo. "Just name it, name a bad idea and it was something we had to deal with," he said.
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Microsoft Considered Giving Away Original Xbox More

Microsoft Considered Giving Away Original Xbox

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  • AND they stole Halo from the PC world.... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I'm still peeved about that Bungie gobble up

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Penguinisto ( 415985 )

      Agreed. if it weren't for Halo and the subsequent lock-in to that console, I suspect the XBox wouldn't have really gotten anywhere.

      Consider that the XBox was still a massive money-sink for years on end, and I daresay that it has still not yet reached its overall ROI, let alone a profit. If it were built/sold by any company other than Microsoft (or similar behemoth-sized), the company would have gone broke years ago from it. They may eventually reach ROI and turn a profit, but I think that's still a couple o

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by afidel ( 530433 )

        The Games division is net -300-400M over the last 12 years, up significantly since Q4 2012 where they were net -3B and the XBox One's losses are significantly smaller than the previous two generations at the same point in the cycle despite the recent price cuts. I'm not sure how much knowledge sharing there's been between the gaming division and the Azure division, but if the MS marketing is anywhere near the truth then it's likely that at least some of that groups significant profitability was gained throu

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by batkiwi ( 137781 )

      You mean from the Apple/Mac world...

  • They might as well have. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 31, 2015 @01:20PM (#49379729)

    After all was said and done, the Xbox lost Microsoft 4 billion dollars. They bought their way in.

    • Re:They might as well have. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Penguinisto ( 415985 ) on Tuesday March 31, 2015 @01:55PM (#49380039) Journal

      More than that... in 2012, I had once estimated that they blew $7bn on the enterprise, and though they're raking in something like $200m/yr (IIRC) in profits now
      (mostly from dev house licensing), they have yet to fill that titanic money hole they dug with the thing.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by aliquis ( 678370 )

        More than that... in 2012, I had once estimated that they blew $7bn on the enterprise, and though they're raking in something like $200m/yr (IIRC) in profits now
        (mostly from dev house licensing), they have yet to fill that titanic money hole they dug with the thing.

        Value of brand recognition?

        Being relevant in consumer products?

        • Value of brand recognition?

          So, wait - who exactly in the First World does not know what Microsoft is and does by now?

          Being relevant in consumer products?

          This one I can sort of agree with, though most of their efforts in this space have flopped spectacularly: MSNTV, Kin, PocketPC, Zune... I think the XBox was the only Microsoft product to date that hadn't crashed and burned insofar as consumer electronics are concerned.

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by aliquis ( 678370 )

            So, wait - who exactly in the First World does not know what Microsoft is and does by now?

            It's know but they remain relevant by staying relevant.

            Of course.

            This one I can sort of agree with, though most of their efforts in this space have flopped spectacularly: MSNTV, Kin, PocketPC, Zune... I think the XBox was the only Microsoft product to date that hadn't crashed and burned insofar as consumer electronics are concerned.

            Ok, so the rest of their attempts failed.

            The Xbox didn't.

            And that's bad because .. ? Not that you say it's bad. But it was on which worked. Good for Microsoft.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by shione ( 666388 )

          microsofts brand name is shot and they know it. Compare the different console boxes. The ps4 and wii u have the company name displayed quite promiantly on them while the xbox one does. Nor did the xbox 360 or the original xbox.

          Even on the zune device boxes microsoft was ashamed to put display their company name prominently on it.

          And on phones they used the Nokia name to push their windows phones.

          Fact is, outside of pc software and hardware, microsoft knows their brand name deters customers.

    • Part of the Plan (Score:2, Interesting)

      by s.petry ( 762400 )

      EEE [wikipedia.org], they simply don't care. Apologies if you have been fooled into thinking there is some new and more altruistic MS Philosophy and I hurt your reality..

  • Dumping (Score:3, Funny)

    by rodrigoandrade ( 713371 ) on Tuesday March 31, 2015 @01:22PM (#49379757)
    Microsoft using their leverage in other areas to elbow their way into a new market? You don't say...

    I'm sure the U.S. Commerce Secretary and the FTC would've had a field day over this.

    • Re:Dumping (Score:4, Funny)

      by gstoddart ( 321705 ) on Tuesday March 31, 2015 @01:32PM (#49379855) Homepage

      And, as usual, without having the slightest idea of what to do with the technology other than try to get market share.

      So I'm forced to conclude most of the successes Microsoft has had in the last decade or more have largely been accidental instead of strategic, and that Microsoft just stumbles around in the dark until something works.

      And then they spend years trying to understand why it worked in the first place and how to replicate it.

      It's official, Microsoft is the Inspector Clouseau of the tech world.

      That's pretty sad.

      • Re:Dumping (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Ravaldy ( 2621787 ) on Tuesday March 31, 2015 @01:55PM (#49380043)

        There's nothing wrong with trying things and stumbling across a working product, solution or theory. That's what humans have been doing for as long as we have existed. Every company I've worked for have tried to introduce new services or products not knowing ahead of time if they would be successful. Some were, some weren't.

        On a side note, MS has always taken tons of feedback from their partners, big and small. What they have done more recently is actually listen to the end users, something they lacked to do in the past.

        • Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)

          by gstoddart ( 321705 )

          You know, when a multi-billion dollar company who spends more on R&D than pretty much everyone else hasn't the slightest idea of what they want to build a product for, and no clear picture for it ... that's pathetic

          If one of the largest corporations is stumbling around like drunken monkeys and finding success through sheer accident, the the CEO is a grossly overpaid idiot who could be replaces with a bunch of drunken monkeys.

          And yet I'm sure Ballmer or whoever it was got paid massive amounts of money to

          • Tell us your thoughts on Google while you're at it.

            • Lol

            • Microsoft does "me too". Apple did well with the ipod, Microsoft called up China and ordered a cheap copy. Nintendo and the other companies had good game consoles, Microsoft stuck their name on one, apparently without having much of a clue about the market they were entering. They then lose a billion dollars or so on each, stubbornly refusing to admit failure.

              Google checks out the market, then releases something that's best-in-class, or often fairly unique, being the first major offering of it's type. T

          • So I guess Pfizer, Intel and Cisco must also be throwing out R&D money out the window since they spend higher percentages of their revenue than MS on R&D.

            Please take the time to figure out what MS has actually achieved R&D wise before knocking it down with non factual information.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      You mean like cell phone plans where you get the phone for "free" but the services cost an arm and a leg?

      Microsoft would have LOVED to have spun things that way and they may still.

      BUT they ended up finally getting a killer app just in time (aka HALO). I remember when XBox launched there was piss all to play on it.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Microsoft is in the process of doing just what cell phone providers did. Windows 10 will be free the first year. You can get Office 365 free for a year in so many ways. It won't be long before the switch is flipped, and you will be locked in to paying to continue using. There will probably be some changes made to file formats locking in you to using Microsoft to open files.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by MarioJE ( 978915 )

          Microsoft is in the process of doing just what cell phone providers did. Windows 10 will be free the first year. You can get Office 365 free for a year in so many ways. It won't be long before the switch is flipped, and you will be locked in to paying to continue using. There will probably be some changes made to file formats locking in you to using Microsoft to open files.

          Not really. The offer expires after a year, not the upgrade. If you do not upgrade within that year, you'll have to pay. A subscription model was never mentioned.

          • unfortunately when asked specifically about it, it was also not denied. so we dont know what will happen yet. but subs are NOT ruled out
            • Yes they did. It is 100% clear. If I upgrade in the first 12 months, my cost is free and my software remains free. If you decide the day after 12 months to upgrade, it may no longer be free, they haven't announced pricing, but my copy which was already upgraded remains free. I'm not saying there is no wiggle room there about getting new updates, but it seems clear that your license doesn't go away.

              Terry Myerson (EVP OS):
              "This is more than a one-time upgrade: once a Windows device is upgraded to
  • The main character in Cory Doctorow's "Little Brother" used a free, ad-supported XBox reflashed with "Paranoid Linux."
    • Yeah, I thought of that too. In the book, Microsoft gave them away for free, thinking they were unhackable, and hoping to make their money back selling games. People found out how to hack them (surprise, surprise) and were able to run whatever they wanted to on them. This is why this concept of giving away the hardware for free is almost always a bad idea. If they really could build unhackable hardware, then I could see a business case for this, but making the hardware free makes the payoff for hacking it

  • Microsoft did try and buy Nintendo in 1998 (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    There was an offer on the table for US$20B, but the owner in Japan turned it down over the objections of family members.

  • Or else Nintendo really would have been doomed. Just look at Rare. RIP

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