ABSTRACT
By this time, the five co-conspirators had become serious, and even though they came from different divisions and had no official group or standing to do so, they began to strategize their approach and write papers to support it. Blackley first gave the project the codename “Midway,” in reference to their intention to attack Sony, a Japanese company, with their eventual product. However, the others in the group didn’t think it was Microsofty enough, and wanted something a little less warlike. All the alternative names derived from DirectX, as they saw it ultimately as a DirectX-Box, but still a PC dedicated to games. One amusing alternative was the XXX-Box, which Hase quipped was based on the observation that during the video tape wars between Sony’s Betamax and VHS, it was in part Sony’s resistance to adult content that led to the VHS victory.
