ABSTRACT
A couple of weeks before the Xbox launch, Microsoft ran a 24-hour gaming contest in New York. John O’Rourke remembers the anxiety he felt over the final months leading up to the launch. When Sony launched its original PlayStation, it not only had decades of experience with consumer electronics, but they had worked with Nintendo, and Ken Kutaragi, the leader of the PlayStation team, had even controversially moonlighted with Nintendo while still working at Sony. In Microsoft’s case, other than Coyner and Booth, they had nobody on the team in marketing or in development who had previous console experience. They had very limited experience with hardware and had never produced a successful consumer device other than joysticks, keyboards and mice. Even their number one game had been developed by a company that had never produced a console title before, which was the case for many of their developers.
