Why Microsoft Got Into the Console Business

An anonymous reader writes "Joachim Kempin, former vice president of Windows Sales, has explained how the original Xbox came to be. It turns out it was Sony's fault, simply because the Japanese company wasn't very friendly towards Microsoft, and Microsoft eventually decided they had to 'stop Sony.' Apparently, long before the Xbox was even an idea, Microsoft was trying to collaborate with Sony in a number of areas they thought there was overlap. That collaboration was sought before even Sony had a games console coming to market, and would have focused on products for the entertainment sector."

Comments

Oh the irony.

[dadelbunts]

Thats hilarious, because the playstation originally came about from sony and nintendo trying to partner up, and nintendo breaking the deal because of arguments about money. Sony was so mad they created the playstation to rival nintendo.

Re:Oh the irony.

[sesshomaru]

Actually, that's inaccurate:

"Using the same Super Disc technology as the proposed SNES drive, Sony began development on what was to eventually become the PlayStaion. Initially called the Super Disc, it was supposed to be able to play both SNES cartridges and CD-ROMs, of which Sony was to be the 'sole worldwide licenser,' as stated in the contract. Nintendo was now to be at the mercy of Sony, who could manufacture their own CDs, play SNES carts, and play Sony CDs. Needless to say, Nintendo began to get worried."
---- History of the PlayStation

Compare to the Super NES Play Station

[tepples]

On the other hand, Nintendo made its own worst enemy by dropping out of the "Play Station" (with a space) partnership with Sony to make a CD-ROM drive. The Play Station would have plugged into the clock port on the bottom of the Super NES using the HANDS protocol (Nintendo's version of Blast Processing). The trouble is that HANDS couldn't copy information directly into video memory; instead, it had to be bounced off the CPU's memory, and that couldn't be done full-screen at a solid 30 fps. So Nintendo dumped Sony for Philips CD-i, and Sony began the PS-X (PlayStation Experiment) project to rework what it had left into a stand-alone console.

In the Harry Potter universe, on the other hand, it might be the case that the Play Station accessory for Super NES came out on schedule, which explains Dudley Dursley having a Play Station in mid-1994 rather than the real-world release date of the late third quarter of 1995.

Re:Co-operate with Microsoft?

[rwyoder]

I think Sony made the right decision there. If Microsoft approached me about "co-operating" I wouldn't touch them with a 10 foot pole. Look how well it worked out for IBM (with MS-DOS and OS/2) or Sun (with Java).

Add Robert Metcalfe and 3Com. Here is a video clip from the documentary "Nerds 2.0.1" where he is talking about how M$ f***ed them over: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaCFHuVZAU0&t=4m

Re:Dreamcast

[LMariachi]

They worked with Sega on an operating system for the Dreamcast, based on Windows CE. According to this list, only 48 of the 688 commercially-released DC games used it.

Re:I remember a story when I worked at Microsoft..

[strength_of_10_men]

To be clear, that chart lists "Entertainment and Devices" division, of which Xbox is but one product, the others being Windows Phone, Surface, all MS Hardware, and other things. So it's not quite as easy as saying "xbox is losing money for MS" unless you can actually break that out of the rest of the division.