ABSTRACT
The meeting was packed with executives, including Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, Rick Thompson, Allard, Cam Ferroni, Robbie Bach, Ed Fries, Craig Mundie, Rick Belluzo, Rick Rashid from Microsoft Research, and Todd Holmdahl. People argued the costs of the project, the business model of selling essentially a $500 hardware device for $300 and losing money on each sale, manufacturing and inventory risks, and so forth. In the minds of some people, the plan had changed since September, when it was based around Original Equipment Manufacturer-built machines, when it was clearly about Microsoft getting into the console manufacturing and marketing business. Of course, it was Gates and Ballmer who needed to be convinced, and so the attention was on them. One real irony is that the final project—the Xbox—was a dedicated game console, not the modified Windows box that Gates had wanted and that the Xbox team had initially proposed.
