Xbox, every mention
85 scenes, the whole family · ← back to Xbox
tap a year for its mentions
every year anyone David Rosenthal 42Ben Gilbert 31Blake Robbins 5Steve Ballmer 4Mitch Lasky 3
Verbatim, from the transcripts: the passages where Xbox comes up
The Steve Ballmer Interview · Acquired
- ▶ 1:04:27 Steve Ballmer Xbox, Surface, phone.
- ▶ 1:04:34 Steve Ballmer I think the guy who actually runs hardware design used to be on Xbox.
- ▶ 1:33:13 David Rosenthal If we call Nvidia's first trick a full trick, then Xbox is a full trick.
- ▶ 1:55:52 Steve Ballmer I highlight that 98 to 2004 were kind of tough years plus Xbox.
- ▶ 2:00:26 Steve Ballmer Yeah, we did make a good decision to do Xbox.
TSMC · Acquired
- ▶ 1:30:31 David Rosenthal They were making GPUs, like, Nvidia's stock tracked whether they won the next Sony contract for the next PlayStation or the Xbox.
Microsoft Volume II: The Complete History and Strategy of the Ballmer Years (Audio) · Acquired
- ▶ 0:51 Ben Gilbert The Internet, Windows XP, Xbox, the browser, search, and mobile.
- ▶ 1:54:26 David Rosenthal So these three-year agreements that you're talking about, Ben, and that covered Windows, that covered Office, that covered all the products that Microsoft offered except, like, Xbox.
- ▶ 2:07:56 David Rosenthal Certain Microsoft fans have probably been listening to this episode and gripping their phones with all their strength, like, when are you gonna talk about Xbox?
- ▶ 2:08:05 David Rosenthal We're gonna talk about Xbox briefly right now.
- ▶ 2:08:08 David Rosenthal We will do a whole nother episode on Xbox someday.
- ▶ 2:08:14 David Rosenthal My case is I love my Xbox, so.
- ▶ 2:08:18 Ben Gilbert Well, it's important to know Microsoft didn't start in gaming with the Xbox.
- ▶ 2:08:34 Ben Gilbert Amazing piece of technology, put Microsoft on the map, and you have the whole rise in PC gaming for the next six years, even before the Xbox.
- ▶ 2:09:19 David Rosenthal Huge story to tell another day, but you're right, that leads into Xbox and Microsoft's entry into the home console.
- ▶ 2:10:02 Ben Gilbert Ok, while we're in Xbox land, should we finish our Xboxiness right now for this episode?
- ▶ 2:10:08 Ben Gilbert Xbox has become an important part of our world.
- ▶ 2:10:16 Ben Gilbert David and I sort of heard people utter things in our research, like Xbox has kind of been a lifetime breakeven business, or it's never meaningfully contributed to Microsoft.
- ▶ 2:10:55 Ben Gilbert So this is five years after the Xbox has come out, loss making.
- ▶ 2:11:10 David Rosenthal Yeah, as three 60 is, yeah, coming into.
- ▶ 2:12:46 Ben Gilbert If I had to make the case of why Xbox has been somewhat of a folly,
- ▶ 2:12:53 Ben Gilbert It would be, there was a lot of Microsoft's best people worked on Xbox.
- ▶ 2:13:00 Ben Gilbert This is a group of people that went and created Xbox Live that by 20 12 had forty million subscribers.
- ▶ 2:13:13 Ben Gilbert The aesthetics of Xbox from a physical perspective, but also the software.
- ▶ 2:13:27 Ben Gilbert The culture at Xbox was so hard driving to produce, at least in this point in history, up to the 2010 time frame, very little in the way of contributing to Microsoft's business, but soaking up a huge amount of the talent.
- ▶ 2:13:50 David Rosenthal I think Xbox Live is debatable.
- ▶ 2:13:56 David Rosenthal Xbox Live was one of the original pioneering internet services, subscription services, across any category of software and technology, and the DNA and experience that Microsoft built from that served it extremely well.
- ▶ 2:43:45 David Rosenthal We may or may not do an episode on Xbox someday, Ben, that's for Ben and I to discuss, you know, privately for parents to discuss after the kids go to bed, but we're definitely going to do an episode on Google.
- ▶ 2:52:10 Ben Gilbert So you've got Xbox Live, where they have forty million users,
- ▶ 3:04:04 Ben Gilbert They were all over an Xbox.
- ▶ 3:52:46 Ben Gilbert Xbox Live was a always on cloud service, real time, zero latency with forty million subscribers.
- ▶ 4:18:40 Ben Gilbert And they did make some good, you know, Xbox is good.
Benchmark’s Mitch Lasky and Blake Robbins on The Art of Business in Gaming · Acquired
- ▶ 29:23 Mitch Lasky I agree with you, and I think that, um, Game Pass from Microsoft is an interesting harbinger of maybe the end of the road for the platform based publisher, or at least the end of this road for the platform based publisher, because
- ▶ 29:44 Mitch Lasky He's now, Phil with Game Pass, aggregating supply again.
- ▶ 31:26 Ben Gilbert I remember I worked at Microsoft in 2012, and I was at our annual meeting in the old key arena, and I watched a demo of cloud gaming on a Windows phone with an Xbox controller.
- ▶ 32:46 Mitch Lasky Or if you were going to play that game, you had a PlayStation, or an Xbox, or you had a gaming PC that was capable of playing it.
- ▶ 40:02 Blake Robbins If you had an Xbox, you couldn't play with your friend who had a PlayStation or a Switch, and really Nintendo and Microsoft went to war against Sony.
- ▶ 1:46:30 Blake Robbins It was bad, like, we would play Sonic, and I'd be like Tails, you know, and it was like, I just remember hating that experience, and it was, it became really clear that my brother just loved single-player narrative type creative games, and…
- ▶ 1:46:55 Blake Robbins Uh, and then really, the three 60, when Xbox three 60 came out, and Xbox Live just really took off.
- ▶ 1:46:55 Blake Robbins Uh, and then really, the three 60, when Xbox three 60 came out, and Xbox Live just really took off.
- ▶ 1:47:02 David Rosenthal Xbox Live was such a, you talked about it a little bit in the console castles, Apple sit.
- ▶ 1:47:22 Blake Robbins It was the number of people that wanted to get online services for their game that had to pay Xbox in addition to their console that they're buying.
- ▶ 1:47:40 David Rosenthal It was just the right to get online with the Xbox.
Holiday Special 2022 · Acquired
- ▶ 13:10 David Rosenthal In the back of my mind, I've been percolating, it could be fun to do a whole episode just on Xbox.
Nvidia: The Machine Learning Company (2006-2022) · Acquired
- ▶ 8:38 David Rosenthal They power the Xbox.
- ▶ 13:36 David Rosenthal They're powering the Xbox.
Nvidia: The GPU Company (1993-2006) · Acquired
- ▶ 1:08:45 David Rosenthal Microsoft's got a secret project that they're working on at this time, the Xbox, which we talked about a lot on the Sony episode and so many times on the show.
- ▶ 1:08:57 David Rosenthal And Microsoft comes to Nvidia and like, we want you to be a key supplier of the graphics, the GPU for the Xbox.
- ▶ 1:09:11 David Rosenthal Five hundred million dollar a year deal for Nvidia to supply the graphics for the Xbox with a two hundred million dollar advance.
- ▶ 1:22:11 Ben Gilbert Okay, David, so Xbox comes out.
- ▶ 1:22:14 Ben Gilbert Nvidia has a card in there that is the, ah, the GPU of the Xbox that has programmable shaders, so, you know, rather than, um, you know, literally just spitting out triangles to put on screen, they actually are running these little programs…
- ▶ 1:23:09 David Rosenthal The year after that, which is basically the calendar year, 2001, the year the Xbox comes out, they do just about 1.4 billion dollars in revenue.
- ▶ 1:31:23 David Rosenthal So they made this deal with Microsoft, right, to power the Xbox, and it was absolutely the right strategic decision to power the Xbox, to get Microsoft's support in creating CG for programmable shaders, you know, protect themselves from…
- ▶ 1:32:02 David Rosenthal The original Xbox, the PlayStation three, which we'll talk about next time, and the Nintendo switch.
- ▶ 1:33:48 David Rosenthal So, you know, if you're looking at this stock in those years, especially as revenue starts to flatten, and a big part of that is coming out, you know, towards the end of the Xbox generation of consoles leading into the Xbox three 60, which…
- ▶ 1:33:48 David Rosenthal So, you know, if you're looking at this stock in those years, especially as revenue starts to flatten, and a big part of that is coming out, you know, towards the end of the Xbox generation of consoles leading into the Xbox three 60, which…
- ▶ 1:36:07 David Rosenthal So, you know, if you're looking at this company at this moment in time, especially as revenues flattening, coming off the Xbox contract, costs, OpEx is going way up, investing in this sort of speculative new area, I can totally see looking…
- ▶ 1:53:49 David Rosenthal Huge team, you know, and the Xbox project was amazing.
- ▶ 1:54:26 David Rosenthal Great, NVIDIA, we're gonna help save you from Intel, and in return, you're gonna, you know, give us a really sweetheart deal on these chips, and you're gonna put us in business with Xbox, and by the way, the other side of your gaming and…
- ▶ 1:54:56 Ben Gilbert I think your assessment of Microsoft did basically nothing except make really good strategic decisions is, like, reasonable enough for DirectX, but totally is not fair for Xbox.
- ▶ 1:55:07 David Rosenthal No, it's not fair for Xbox at all.
- ▶ 1:55:10 Ben Gilbert But it is an interesting way of, like, to put it another way, and let's exclude Xbox for a moment, you're basically just recognizing that Microsoft had an unbelievable position in the market and did an amazing capital allocation job…
SONY (75 years of electronics history in 3 hours) · Acquired
- ▶ 1:57:56 Ben Gilbert I guess it would have been the original Xbox, but I'm not sure that would have been out yet.
- ▶ 1:58:08 Ben Gilbert So I, I guess Xbox would have been the other one that I could have gotten, but yeah, the, the PS two was like, I think a sufficient number of my friends had playstations where I was like used to the, the controller
- ▶ 1:59:02 David Rosenthal Relegated to a niche player, basically Microsoft to come in with the Xbox, but the first Xbox Sony, the PS two just trounced it.
- ▶ 2:00:10 David Rosenthal And so it actually, like, opened the door for Xbox and three 60 to bring a lot of developers in.
- ▶ 2:00:10 David Rosenthal And so it actually, like, opened the door for Xbox and three 60 to bring a lot of developers in.
- ▶ 2:00:24 David Rosenthal They barely won the generation war between the PS three and the Xbox three 60, but like they should have just totally walked away with it.
- ▶ 2:01:22 Ben Gilbert And Microsoft ends up not selling enough devices and not having a compelling enough story like the Xbox one, for example, of like how this thing is really going to make your life that much better by being the computing thing in the living…
- ▶ 2:06:48 David Rosenthal Just this current generation of consoles with the series X and S Xboxes and the PS five.
- ▶ 2:07:56 Ben Gilbert If you look at what Microsoft's done with Game Pass, which is brilliant, they're making it sort of financially irresponsible to buy one of their devices outright.
- ▶ 2:08:07 David Rosenthal It's financially irresponsible as a gamer not to subscribe to game pass.
- ▶ 2:08:22 David Rosenthal Game pass itself is 15 bucks a month.
- ▶ 2:08:34 Ben Gilbert And so when you look at it, Microsoft is now up to eighteen million subscribers to Game Pass, which to your point, I think there's like a cheap version at 10 and then a more expensive version at 15.
- ▶ 2:08:44 Ben Gilbert So every year as an annuity is generating two to three billion dollars on Game Pass.
- ▶ 2:09:12 David Rosenthal I am not one of those gamers, and I think there are a lot of gamers out there like me that in an ordinary year I would maybe buy a couple games, but it's a no-brainer for me to subscribe to Game Pass for 15 bucks a month.
- ▶ 2:10:28 David Rosenthal You know, people are worried about with the Activision deal about whether Microsoft would make Activision's games exclusive on Xbox.
- ▶ 2:11:18 Ben Gilbert It's project Spartacus, by the way, is the rumored game pass alternative, which is kind of a mess because they already have the PlayStation network and then they have PlayStation.
- ▶ 2:13:40 David Rosenthal Oh, yeah, but I think like we were just talking about with, um, Game Pass, I think Microsoft has, uh, finally abandoned that computer in your living room vision for Xbox and realized like, no, no, no, this is a good business.
- ▶ 2:13:40 David Rosenthal Oh, yeah, but I think like we were just talking about with, um, Game Pass, I think Microsoft has, uh, finally abandoned that computer in your living room vision for Xbox and realized like, no, no, no, this is a good business.
- ▶ 2:21:54 Ben Gilbert Only, like, ten-ish percent is selling hardware, and in the same way that Microsoft has reoriented their business model around, we gotta keep selling people who like Xbox's digital stuff, Sony's realized that too, they just haven't changed…
- ▶ 2:30:09 David Rosenthal I was like, what, why is this not on Xbox?
- ▶ 2:33:21 Ben Gilbert My bear is that Microsoft's right in their strategy with Game Pass, and gaming will move to the Netflix of video games style thing, and that it's not about having the most beastly console and keeping the business model the same.
- ▶ 2:33:36 Ben Gilbert And maybe the Xbox, they have finally segmented the market right where they can sell an expensive beastly console to the people that want that and sell a pretty good console to everyone else and make a ton of money on, you know, two to…
- ▶ 2:42:38 David Rosenthal And it's interesting though, like with game pass and if the, if the industry moves much more to subscription dynamics, I do think a lot of this power goes away.