Customer Reviews

Opening the Xbox: Inside Microsoft's Plan to Unleash an Entertainment Revolution

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is a great book! Author Dean Takahashi gives a detailed insight as to the development and marketing of the XBOX from its early conception right up to its high profile launch!

Being an XBOX fan, this was just the book to read to help dispel some of the myths that were floating around when the XBOX was being developed. You also get a good idea of how the Microsoft corporation thinks and operates not just in the video game market, but throughout all of their business ventures. Interesting theories as to why Microsoft entered the console market in the first place are discussed (one theory is that the XBOX is Microsoft's act of "revenge" against Sony when it looked elsewhere for it's PS2 development systems!).

I highly recommend "Opening the XBOX" to anyone who enjoys video games in general or for someone who is looking for a book that's different than all the other business books currently in stores. Well worth the price and a very insightful look into the strategy and culture that is the Microsoft Corporation.

I don't like Microsoft. In fact, I bought a PS 2 just to spite them. But, I couldn't put this book down in the bookstore.

The reader gets rare glimpes of the decision making processes for Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo. The book provides good information on the specifications and history for all 3 systems. The book also gives good insight into the developer's point of view as well. The personalities of the people involved are very interesting, especially the ones from Microsoft.

It's one of the best books I've read in a while. I found it very entertaining and informative.

Dean Takahashi is quite possibly the finest reporter ever to dive into the video game arena. He has a shrewd understanding of the financial arena, does not take surface answers seriously, and digs.

He is also a fine writer.

And all of this is apparent in "Opening the Xbox," the deepest and best coverage ever dedicated to a single game console.

I have always belonged to the "Phoenix," "Ultimate History of Video Games," "Supercade," "Arcade Fever" school of game coverage--these volumes seem dedicated to the idea that the book format is so vast that you need to cover the entire industry in it.

David Sheff bucked that trend with "Game Over," dedicating an entire book to the history of Nintendo with exemplary results. Then Takahashi comes along and does an entire book on one console--ONE CONSOLE! The result is real depth.

"Opening the Xbox" does a great job of capturing the intrigue and excitement of Microsoft's boardrooms. Takahashi takes more than a fly-on-the-wall approach here, he is a genuine fixture--he is pervasive, making everybody explain what they did and why they did it.

"Opening the Xbox" offers a most thorough picture of the inside decision making process for one small segment of gaming; and doing so, it offers a big-picture view for any company in an analogous situation.

This is an excellent book on at least two different levels. First of all, it is an easy and fascinating read about a rapid development effort accomplished with virtually unlimited resources. Secondly, the author provides a view of the dynamics of Microsoft's motivation and behavior in moving against a well entrenched competitor in an interesting new market, namely games. The tactics perfected in unhorsing Apple, WordPerfect, Novell, and Netscape from their dominant market positions are well demonstrated in the Xbox effort detailed in this book. The only missing piece for me was a careful examination of the hardware, software and developer support trade-offs between the Sony PlayStation2 and the Microsoft Xbox in contrast to earlier Microsoft predations. However, such a detailed examination would have bored most readers so I can't complain. Anyway, those insights are available elsewhere.

On the whole, I was well rewarded with the book because of its "view-from-the-inside" as opposed to the externally obvious facts. I think this is a "must" read for anyone expecting to participate in the games market either as a consumer or provider, and for that matter, anyone who expects to provide services or products to Microsoft, sell or use their products or compete against them. Clearly, Microsoft is a tenacious competitor with virtually unlimited resources. Beware Nokia!

What the book is:

An interesting look at how projects evolve inside a company like Microsoft and how that evolution effects subsequent strategy. It makes an interesting point of comparison for similar projects in other companies.

A good look at how Microsoft is responding to the question of games and the gaming industry.

What the book is not:

Particularly well-written, at least in my opinion. The writing felt clunky, too much like an extended magazine article and not enough like a book.

Well documented. I expected more than interviews and anecdotal evidence.

One only has to read Dean Takahashi's excellent work between the covers of Red Herring to know that he's plugged into the game industry in a way very few journalists are. He puts his considerable industry knowledge to good use in Opening the Xbox.
Microsoft receives more than its fair share of analysis and it's refreshing to read something about the workings of the company that isn't mere speculation. From "The Valentine's Day Massacre" to absinthe laced parties with game developers - it's all here. Mr. Takahashi was granted access to the people and the process and shares it with us in a way that keeps you turning pages.
The Xbox may very well be the biggest boondoggle in Microsoft's history and Opening the Xbox continues to show it's relevance in light of Microsoft's recently announced plans for "Freon." Read the book as an excellent case study in technology management or as a tell all featuring many of Microsoft's biggest players. Its well worth your time.

This book is well worth reading, but it is not spectacular. It is interesting to note that Microsoft got Mr Takahashi to write the book. They clearly believe that the Xbox is something spectacular.

The book is the usual business profile project creation book. It has the obligatory references to The Soul of a New Machine and lots of resume-like bios of the main characters involved in the Xbox saga. However, the book is well written and does have a number of insights into how capable the people are at MS, how well and with what determination they look at both the business case and the technology they can build.

The book also has a lot of interesting anecdotes about how the web tv project and the Xbox interacted and about Microsofts possible purchases of other games companies.

The one area where the book could be better is by including more discussion about the Xbox's actual technology, but this would have required a more technical writer and would be for a much more limited audience.

All in all, a well recommended good read.

The video game industry is quickly become a monster of a market into today's economy. This book is a good introduction to the internal organizational politics that occurs. I believe the author has used several themes to highlight the story of how Microsoft created the Xbox.

1. Innovation. This is always a topic for business stories. The book does an excellent job on describing the (almost) day to day activities that an internal, subversive group within Microsoft that hatched the idea for a game console.

2. Corporate culture. Microsoft has been accused of having a insular culture that prohibits risk-taking activities. I think in the Windows Operating System group this might be true. But Microsoft's game console strategy was one of new entrant. Sony, Sega, and Nintendo were the heavyweights. It was interesting to read how Microsoft approached the market by listening to game developers and gamers needs. They outlined a strategy that highlighted several competitive elements that the other, more entrench firms ignored.

3. Overview of Game Culture. The author is a well-known journalist that has been covering the game industry for years. There are some great insights on the industry's perks and unique charactistics. The Japanese game culture is much more highly developed vs. the American. The demographics are very selected in the US -- 18 to 26 males. Microsoft, as part of its initial console strategy, aimed to enlarge this demographic to include woman and older men.

Yet I have several misgivings about this book.

1. There aren't any reproduced internal memos, white papers, or notes that made up the effort to create the console. We are only shown photos of Microsoft employees. It would have been nice to see actual artifacts.

2. The reading sometimes is too easy. The author, of course, is a journalist. It is by far an unscholarly text.

Dean does a wonderful job of telling the fascinating story of the x-box from beginning to end while keeping the reader excited. I also liked the amount of detail the book went into and how it really makes the reader feel as if they understand the key characters in the x-box's development.

"The revolution will come in fits and starts. It probably won't come from giving hardcore gamers more of what they already like. Doing a fighting game with better graphics isn't really a new invention. Yet much of the industry is currently afflicted with the illusion that it is. About 60 percent of the successful games now are either sequels or extensions of brands that exist in another medium. There is a real risk of what the IDSA'a Doug Lowenstein calls "creative ennui."...The gaming industry has produced cultural icons before, from Pac Man to Pong, and it will do so again. As every gamer believes, the ideal game isn't here yet. It's just around the corner." (p. 346 - 347).

I just got done reading "Opening The Xbox". I found it to be a very readable book, with a very comfortable writing style. The descriptions of the what the project team went through, however, seemed very reminiscent of many other professional projects I have been involved with in my career, and not necessarily unique to Microsoft or the tech. industry. What was enjoyable and enlightening, however, was the detail which Mr. Takahashi provided. Liberally spiced with information that was outside of the inner mechanics at Microsoft (like the challenges with Nvidia, Flextronics' manufacturing capacity, the marketing and sales performance of competing platforms, etc.), provided the perfect backdrop to the whole story.

In the end, I found it to be an easy and enjoyable read. It provides great insight into Microsoft's launch of the Xbox, and an interesting perspective on the video games industry as a whole. I also appreciated the "personal face" Mr. Takhashi gave the story by providing interesting tidbits of the personalities and their lives, throughout the story. That technique not only made it very readable, but it also helped me relate to the story in a much more fulfilling way.