Tag Archives: kevin bachus

The name was decided and the hardware shown: but what of the games? Patrick Garratt looks at the original Xbox’s launch line-up and the console’s release in the final part of our four-feature special.

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With the Xbox project finally greenlit, the Microsoft team prepared to show it to the world. Patrick Garratt tells the story of the GDC and CES Bill Gates reveals and why you were nearly playing the “Microsoft 11X”.

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In the second part of the story of the original Xbox’s launch, Patrick Garratt charts the terrific obstacles facing the console’s team as it pushed towards a final greenlight from Microsoft boss Bill Gates.

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Xbox celebrates its tenth birthday this year, having launched in the US on November 15, 2001. In this four-part special, Patrick Garratt talks to members of the console’s original team and tells its release story.

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Kevin Bachus, former head of Xbox and CEO of Infinium Labs – maker of the highly-panned Phantom console – has had a chat with Gamsutra regarding the ill-fated system and how Infinium is trying to bring it back to life.

Bachus is no longer with Infinium, but still has an “empty place in his heart” for the console-that-never-was, and wishes the company all the best in trying to finally bring Phantom to the market.

“I wish them nothing but success,” he said. “I think that for me, there’s kind of an empty place in our heart where Phantom should be because there was tremendous skepticism about the system and a lot of joke-telling and a lot of criticism.

“In some cases, there was also some bitterness and nastiness that was directed at the product, which is unfortunate because for those who actually spent the time to get to understand what we were doing and looked at it, I think they saw something that probably was pretty cool.

“Maybe in a way, it was a little bit ahead of its time because it was attempting to make the whole process of accessing games easier and therefore more accessible to a broader audience.”

He went on to say that he thought the idea of the system is “still very sound”.

More through the link.