ABSTRACT
In December 1999, the Xbox team produced another report, which they titled “Hail Mary”. A “yes” would mean a commitment to announcing the Xbox at the upcoming CES and Game Developers Conference. There were several slides offering alternative strategies, such as putting $2 billion into Sega in exchange for equity and developing Xbox with them. Bob McBreen spent many hours trying to figure out how to manage costs on Xbox, and the hard drive was one of the big issues. Another Xbox feature that had been proposed from the start, but that was controversial, was the inclusion of a broadband Ethernet connection. Robbie Bach says, “The interesting thing is that for Xbox the idea of an online game service was part of the original plan, but when we launched there was no online gaming. Don Coyner was involved in the early modem versus broadband arguments, although he moved out of marketing soon after the Xbox launch.
