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Interview With Initiator of DirectX

Posted by Zonk on from the fighting-the-man dept.

Miguel de Icaza writes "There's a great interview from Shacknews with Alex St. John, one of the earlier DirectX / gaming guys. He talks about almost losing his job going against Bill Gates, and talks a bit about the MS development & political process. 'You know why the X on the Xbox is a glowing green X? The original codename for Direct X was the Manhattan Project, because strategically it was an effort to displace Japanese game consoles with PCs and ultimately the Xbox. We called it the Manhattan Project because that was the codename for the program developing the nuclear bomb. We had a glowing radiation logo for the prototype for Direct X, and of course as soon as that got out and the press covered it, it caused a scandal.'"

10 of 58 comments (clear)

  1. WildTangent by zehnra · · Score: 4, Interesting

    He's also the father of WildTangent...ugh.

    1. Re:WildTangent by kinglink · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Something they tend to avoid mentioning. The interview is interesting but it's a first hand account. If I was telling my story to a reporter I'd always wear a cape and fight supervillians in my off time, wait, in fact I already do that!

      I'm glad he's calling vista's feature set stupid, but the thing is it's too fucking late, the system shipped Microsoft's not going to pull these features out because it's a problem and we're going to be stuck with them for 4-5 years.

      And yeah he ran wildtangent a gaming company which is practically malware, I wonder if his hatred of Vista is more based on a more secure install process for the type of files wildtangent used.

  2. Codenames by ESOB · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The original XBox had the codename of Midway. Midway was the battle in the Pacific that essentially guaranteed that Japan could not invade the US. The US sunk all of Japan's main carriers and then started pushing back the Japanese all other fronts. So I guess naming things after the defeat of Japan in WWII is common practice within Microsoft HQ.

  3. And also, I know from personal experience... by EWAdams · · Score: 2, Informative

    ... a very aggressive, pushy, and offensive person who will try to take maximum advantage of his trade partners in his business dealings. A company I was once affiliated with threatened to cancel a contract with Microsoft because of his behavior. Microsoft caved and cleaned up their act. But if the rumors are true, he was only acting in the way his boss Gates taught him to.

    --
    I piss off bigots.
  4. Most scathing comments about Vista yet by drinkypoo · · Score: 4, Informative

    FTFA:

    The biggest foolishness is Vista's security architecture. Any time someone questions Vista's security, Microsoft accuses that person of being anti-security, or is just bummed because they can't do naughty things that they otherwise wanted to do. Vista's security is weird, it's like a house made out of concrete walls but has screen doors. It's an enormously overbuilt security system with huge, gaping holes. It's extremely intrusive, and it gets in the way of the user's experience without actually being secure. It makes it even harder for consumers to download things and play games, without actually gaining any security benefits. It basically fucks up legitimate applications while leaving holes for the bad ones to just climb on through.

    Holy shit, Batman! That's the strongest anti-endorsement of Vista I've yet seen. It's not news, but it's the first time an insider who is really in a position to know what's going on behind the scenes (assuming he still has friends inside Microsoft, which is probably a safe assumption) has said anything this negative.

    This slightly earlier paragraph was almost as good:

    What you see with Microsoft is, without people at Microsoft who realize that the operating system does not add value to gaming, it gets in the way, they think they can add more value by adding in more shit that only gets in the way of making a good game. Unfortunately, Vista does that. Microsoft added more shit that impedes game development. It's certainly possible to make great games in Vista, it's just more of a pain in the ass than it needs to be. I think Vista is a missed opportunity for Microsoft to have done a better job in supporting PC gaming.

    If you still needed any evidence that Microsoft doesn't understand games or security... there it is.

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    1. Re:Most scathing comments about Vista yet by spyrochaete · · Score: 4, Informative

      Alex St. John is a regular columnist for Computer Power User magazine and he is constantly bashing Microsoft. This interview was fascinating in that it revealed where he's coming from, but it doesn't really excuse his demeanour. Take his words with a grain of salt - all he writes about is Microsoft and he never has anything positive to say.

    2. Re:Most scathing comments about Vista yet by blahplusplus · · Score: 3, Insightful

      "Take his words with a grain of salt - all he writes about is Microsoft and he never has anything positive to say."

      True but just by reading what he says you can tell he's smart as a whip. He knew that gaming was one of the primary reasons anyone stuck with windows.

    3. Re:Most scathing comments about Vista yet by drinkypoo · · Score: 2, Insightful

      How great Microsoft was

      From a certain point of view, they are great. They offer products which do just about everything important, although I agree that they don't necessarily do a great job of any of them (look at it this way though, Microsoft is to Computer Associates as Einstein is to Dubya.) Microsoft is the 800 pound gorilla and that engenders either fear or respect, either of which can be said to confer greatness.

      How he was the father of DirectX and how awesome DirectX was.

      And if we take a look at the history of PC gaming, DirectX is a milestone that will stand for all eternity as the moment when someone pulled their head out of their ass and provided a useful API for game developers on a mainstream operating system.

      Of course, Direct3D's release is a day that will live in eternal infamy, but you can't have everything (and D3D wasn't part of the original versions of DirectX.)

      How Microsoft understood gaming better than Sony did and that the Xbox would rule!

      I don't know about Microsoft understanding gaming better than Sony, but the PS3 is hurtin' for certain. UK sales dropped by something like 68% in the second week. No one expects the launch week fervor to continue forever but Sony's lunch is being rapidly eaten by their competitors.

      PS2 was the clear winner in the last generation, but it doesn't look like PS3 is a credible contender... They REALLY have to pull it out of the trash at this point, and I don't know if they have what it takes. I'm pretty sure they don't. Sony has a long history of fucking up a good thing with just a few elements of stupidity, like Minidisc and then later even NetMD, for example.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  5. Re:Nice cigar by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    You know what Freud said about men who smoke cigars, right? They have a subconcious desire to perform fellatio.

    That was just Freud's way of letting people know he had a conscious desire to perform fellatio.

  6. The Microsoft way by mzs · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Shack: When did you realize what you were getting yourself into, as you say?

    Alex St John: A month or so in, I still didn't know exactly what my job was until one of the guys who hired me said, "Write a strategy for how you would persuade the publishing industry to move to Windows." I spent a lot of time writing documents saying here's what our strategy should be, here's how we could convince companies to sign on, all that. I came in to do my presentation, and I got about three slides into it before I was interrupted by one of the executives saying, "This is all great stuff, you have a perfect plan. Developers who are reasonable should all support it, but what do you do if none of this works." "What do you mean?" "What if in spite of your best efforts, your best arguments, you best relationships, you can't get them to support them. How do you force the industry to support Microsoft anyway?" "Force them? Well, I don't know." "Come back when you have a plan that answers that question."

    That perplexed me for a long time. I'm thinking, "What the hell does he mean, force them? I can't hold a gun to their head, so how do I put all these companies in a position where, regardless of what they see is in their best interest, they have to adopt your technology?" That experience had a major impact on my thinking. I realized that a major part of my job was to figure out how to use technology control to create economic force, or leverage, such that money and business flowed in Microsoft's direction, and people had to go [to them]. That, ultimately, is when I became a "Microsoft guy," when I got that concept.