#Roadblock game hard drive crash full
#Roadblock game hard drive crash PS 3

One Electronic Arts executive estimated that it took 20 employees to make a PlayStation game, 80 to make a PS 2 game, and 150 to make a PS 3 game. Selling games was the way to offset the losses. When the machine started selling for $299, the cost for making each machine was around $425. Microsoft had to take a lot of costly off-the-shelf parts, including an expensive hard disk drive. There wasn’t enough time to design unique chips and hardware that could be made more cheaply over time. That was driven by necessity, since the machine went from idea to product in about half the time it usually took to design such a complicated device. The toughest part was that the machine wasn’t designed to take advantage of declining prices or volume discounts on component manufacturing, the way a mass-market electronics product would ordinarily be designed. That amounted to a $168 loss on every machine that Microsoft sold. Insiders believed that Microsoft lost $3.7 billion on the original Xbox by 2005. But the vast majority of it was due to Xbox and the loss that the company was taking on every machine that it made. That number included some other money-losing ventures too.

After four years, Microsoft’s Home and Entertainment Group reported a total loss of $4 billion. There were now around 2,000 people in the game division, still less than what Sony had but far more than the 400 that Microsoft had before the Xbox.īut Microsoft had dug itself a hole. Bill Gates was up for another round, though this time he would do it as chairman, in a secondary role to the newly-minted CEO Steve Ballmer.

I’m not the right guy to hang out and optimize a business like that.”Ī bunch of veterans did stick around. “I’m stupid enough to push them even when it is disadvantageous to me. “The thing I’m really good at is being immune enough to pain to continue to push ideas I really believe in,” he said. In a recent interview, he had no regrets about leaving. He left Microsoft in the spring of 2002, following his buddy Kevin Bachus out the door. It’s just, ‘Hey, play again.'” Easy come, easy go: $4 billion in lossesīlackley had no more stomach for this second battle. There’s no, like, even tickets to buy funny dolls or anything. If you play perfectly, at the end, it says, ‘You get to play again.’ That’s all it says! You put your hand in the till. He said, “The first generation, it’s just like a video game. “Fuck off,” Blackley said, laughing because he was so exhausted.īill Gates himself summed up his feelings with a Time magazine writer. “Welcome to the starting line,” Bach said. On the night that the Xbox launched in Times Square, chief Xbox officer Robbie Bach was standing with co-creator Seamus Blackley. Later dubbed the Xbox 360, it would finish what the Xbox had started.

#Roadblock game hard drive crash full

As soon as the Xbox shipped, Microsoft had to start running full blast. Instead of being 20 months behind Sony, Microsoft now planned to hit the market at the same time or before Sony came out with its next console. To turn things around, Microsoft had to initiate a new console war with its own surprise attack. With such a lopsided tally, Sony was able to snare exclusive games such as Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. The PlayStation 2 sold more than 90 million units by mid-2005, while Nintendo’s GameCube came in a close third with 20 million units sold. Over four years, that grew to 21 million consoles sold.īut Sony won the war for that console generation. It sold three games for every box and generated $750 million in revenue. It earned Microsoft a precious toehold in the living room, selling 1.5 million units in its first season. The company’s first video game console came together in just 20 months from conception to launch. It was a miracle that Microsoft got the first Xbox out the door. This story takes us through the aftermath, the launch of the Xbox 360, and the present day state of the video game wars. Part 1 took us through the launch of the Xbox. The narrative is based on recent interviews as well as my two books: Opening the Xbox: Inside Microsoft’s Plan to Unleash an Entertainment Revolution, published in 2002 and The Xbox 360 Uncloaked: The real story behind Microsoft’s next generation video game console, published in 2006. Editor’s note: This story is the second of two pieces on the 10th anniversary of the launch of Microsoft’s Xbox video game console, which debuted Nov.