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Tuesday, Nov 10, 2009
Sales have been disappointing, and the co-creator of Microsoft's game console just quit his job -- a day before a book portraying him as a hero hit the bookstores.
Apr 25, 2002 | On Monday, Seamus Blackley, co-creator and lead evangelist for Microsoft's Xbox video game system, sent a shockwave through the gaming community by resigning from his job. Following close on the heels of slumping Xbox sales reports and overseas price cuts, the departure of the energetic Blackley raised eyebrows. Was Blackley another casualty in the latest round of video game console wars?
An intriguing coincidence added spice to the development -- 24 hours after Blackley's resignation was announced, a kiss-and-tell volume offering remarkable insights into Microsoft's often contentious Xbox development process reached book sellers around the globe. The new tome is "Opening the Xbox: Inside Microsoft's Plan to Unleash an Entertainment Revolution."
Its author, Dean Takahashi, a senior writer at Red Herring magazine and former reporter for the Wall Street Journal, was clearly able to cultivate reliable sources at normally tight-lipped Microsoft. He describes in withering detail fascinating scenes such as a mano-a-mano showdown between Microsoft's Xbox and WebTV development teams, presided over by one Bill Gates. If Takahashi's revealing book can be said to have a hero, it's Seamus Blackley, who emerges as the driving force behind the Xbox.
Was there any connection between the book's publication and Blackley's departure? Both Blackley and Takahashi say no. But direct link or not, there's still little question that Blackley's resignation, combined with the publication of "Opening the Xbox" and widespread news reports of disappointing Xbox sales, is opening the door for speculation that Microsoft's much hyped and hugely expensive entry into the console business may already be stumbling.
Author Dean Takahashi shrugged off the connection between Blackley's exit and the book's publication.
"It's coincidental," Takahashi says. "We didn't plan it together although he [Blackley] joked with me that he wanted a cut of my first-day sales."
Nonetheless, Microsoft was definitely curious about the book. And in an odd twist, Microsoft officials had Takahashi's book in a hand a month prior to publication.
"Microsoft got hold of the advance copies before I did through their own connections with the game strategy division of my publisher," says Takahashi.
"Opening the Xbox" is published by Prima Publishing. Among gamers, the Prima name is best known for publishing strategy guidebooks for a wide variety of console and computer titles. Prima guides are currently available for more than a dozen Xbox games, including Microsoft's popular shooter Halo and gridiron simulation NFL Fever 2002. Strategy guide publishers like Prima often depend heavily on the cooperation of game companies -- like Microsoft -- to release hint books that are information packed, timely and useful to gamers.
However it happened, "Opening the Xbox," which includes a pull-no-punches chapter on the Xbox's disastrous showing at last year's Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) caused a stir in Redmond.
In its epilogue, Takahashi's book emphasizes Blackley's desire to jump back into game development, either at Microsoft or elsewhere. Takahashi says that after the book made the rounds in Redmond, as many as 30 Microsoft staffers approached Blackley at various times to ask when he was leaving. As it turned out, the answer was "real soon."
For his part, Seamus Blackley scoffed at the notion that Takahashi's book played any role in his parting of ways with Microsoft.
"The timing has nothing to do with anything except possibly my naiveté," he said in an interview conducted the day after his resignation.
Now shed of his Xbox responsibilities, Blackley is embarking on a game-industry partnership rumored to include former high-level Xbox team member Kevin Bachus. Although Blackley was unwilling to reveal any details before next month's E3 show in Los Angeles, he did let some of his future plans slip.
"I talked to my three partners many months ago about this idea for the company, which is largely based on our common experience about the challenges of game development and game publishing and what was stopping innovative games from getting made," he says.
"It's the kind of stuff," Blackley adds, "that we talked about at GDC [Game Developers Conference], when I'd hang out with Phil Harrison [of Sony] or those Nintendo guys. We all have the same problem. We'd launch a new console but we can't get people to make new content for it. It's a big investment for the publishers and it's a risk for developers. Based on our experience we realized there's an opportunity to make a company that could really encourage a lot of products to be made and to be made really well."
For months prior to his departure, Blackley lived a dual existence, dreaming of the new venture while simultaneously championing the Xbox for his employer, Microsoft.
"Basically I stayed back at Microsoft and these guys went off and started doing work on the idea. I'm cheering from the sideline but I can't really pitch in. It started to really take off -- especially after GDC, where they met with a lot of different people and got incredible, surprising enthusiasm. It became clear that I had to make a call -- either go with these guys and build this new thing or stick with Xbox."
Blackley denied that disappointing system sales and Microsoft's recent decision to cut the Xbox's price in the European and Australian markets influenced his departure.
"Xbox is OK," he says. "I'm not leaving because Xbox is screwed up. I'm leaving for entirely selfish personal reasons. I want to go make games."
The looming presence of E3, the gaming industry's big dance at which everybody who's anybody gathers to show their wares, apparently pushed Blackley over the edge.
"Everything came together, especially with the timing of E3," he said. "We've got to launch the company and get things on board and we decided that this is the right time. That's really what drove the decision."
So will Blackley be developing games for Xbox now that he's on the outside, looking in?
"Absolutely! Xbox kicks ass."
But, hey, what else would you expect an ex-Xbox evangelist to say?
