| A fascinating insider's look at the evolution of the Xbox 360 and Microsoft's ambitious gamble to become a leading force in the multi-billion dollar video game industry. Through extensive interviews and unprecedented access, San Jose Mercury News Technology and Gaming Writer Dean Takahashi takes you behind the scenes as he reveals... The birth of the machine as seen through the eyes of the Xbox 360 engineers who designed it... Blow-by-blow coverage of the heated internal debates as senior Microsoft executives battle to define the future of the Xbox brand... The strategic chess moves as Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, and company take risk after risk, trying to outmaneuver their archrivals for the brass ring: dominance of the incredibly lucrative video game market... Sony, Nintendo, Electronic Arts, the entire Microsoft Xbox 360 team, and the industry's most celebrated game developers -- all of the major players are included in this captivating story.
The people who make consoles are made of sturdy stuff. They take a lot of risks, but they don’t always get much glory. In my first book on the Xbox, and in this one as well, I’ve tried to dwell on the humans behind the machine. This is their story.
I didn’t land a publisher for this book until August, 2005. But I have been working on it in some fashion from the moment my first book on the chronicles of the Xbox ended in 2002. I wrote my stories on the evolution of the video game industry for Red Herring magazine and, later, The San Jose Mercury News, and I saved my notes like a pack rat. At first, I didn’t think the subject would lend itself to a second book. Microsoft didn’t conquer the world the first time around, so who would want to read a sequel? But I have run into a lot of people who felt the subject deserved another telling. Popular demand drove me to give it another try. I wanted to give this book an insider’s take, a probe into a single project, with as much detail as possible, in the hopes of recreating a feeling that you’re there with the team. This would be a story that you wouldn’t get by simply following the public announcements about the project in chronological order. That’s what Tracy Kidder pulled off with The Soul of a New Machine, and that has always been my beacon. |