I feel like the "at Microsoft" already implies billions of funding. However, teams within big companies are not immune to reduced funding and cancelling if their strategy does not work.

> billions of dollars

How big were Sony and Nintendo at the time? Even with Microsoft's war chest, it was an uphill battle.

Not really. It was clear that there was space for another large player in the console market. Sega was done or dying, Sony and Nintendo couldn't keep the entire playerbases to themselves (and PC and Mac are barely worth mentioning im sorry to say).

I'd say Sega's floundering indicated the opposite, despite a huge portion of that being own goals. I don't see any fundamental reason the market couldn't have been a duopoly.

And, to the GP point of crediting Spencer, there weren't even many synergies to exploit with a Microsoft console in the first XBox generation. It certainly didn't "integrate" with Windows in any way that made you more likely to buy it over alternative consoles.

AFAICT (as someone who doesn't spend much time console gaming now), its success was essentially built on the back of (1) access to capital, (2) savvy exclusives, (3) intelligent acquisitions, (4) avoiding missteps in hardware refreshes, and in later generations (5) strength of social platform. So, props where props are due, because 4/5 of those are skill. Especially while no doubt having to fight an internal battle against all the other Microsoft political power centers.

IMO, and dismiss this as just gut feeling if you want, but it was just a matter of time before there was a 3rd big player. Console gaming was getting too big, too fast for there to be just 2 options for the market. Someone was going to come along and do it better than Sega. Now, all credit to the bigwigs for having the business savvy to pull it off. But with the size and scale of console gaming, 2 consoles was just not going to cut it. (PC gaming was finished as a true competitor due to cost differences).

My read is that it was really Nintendo's failure to broaden their market that opened up the space. Cart vs CD was a understandable debate when the N64 was being designed. But the GameCube vs PS2 was just... ugh. And Sony has always had arrogance in spades when they get a lead.

I guess, in retrospect, Microsoft's fundamental synergy was "developers, developers, developers!" And realizing trading more powerful commodity PC hardware for decreased programming difficulty was a good deal. There were a large number of developers, or future developers, dissatisfied with catering to {insert Nintendo or Sony weird architecture hoops du jour}.

That's a good point. The Gamecube was definitely underwhelming in it's library of games and frustrated a lot of consumers. I think the point I'm trying to make is that it was basically inevitable that there would be a new major console. The market was too big. I'm sure there was also a chance that this wouldn't happen, and Sega/Sony/Nintendo kept on ruling the market. But it just takes one misstep. And there were two (Dreamcast and Gamecube) right as gaming was really starting to explode into its present-day extent.

I'm not trying to argue about the specifics about what happened, but just in general terms, there was always going to be room for a competitor in a space that big, that was changing that rapidly. Imho.

Makes sense! Between chance of failure & rate of change, the odds looked pretty good.

I'm more flummoxed by the fact that a fundamentally social-native offering didn't disrupt the existing ecosystem, in the 2000 timeframe.

We had chat. We had basic web. Keyboards weren't that expensive, were they? Seems a killer feature for kids.

Not straight "the Web on your console", but something more like AOL, Prodigy, and the late 90s portals.

My only explanation is that the 3 big platform companies were still thinking in packaged software/games, sold retail, terms. Hence XBox Live, when it emerged, was essentially a way to get more value (multiplayer) out of the packaged software you bought.

You forget how big Nintendo's war chest is