Bill Gates Wanted to Put a Modem in the Xbox

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
Joined
May 9, 2000
Messages
75,399
If Bill Gates had his way with the first Xbox, you would have received a totally new gaming experience through the blazing speed from a built-in modem. Good idea Bill, but you need to raise your sights a bit. You have the Xbox development crew to thank for insisting on broadband and Mr. Gates for being a good CEO and taking their advice.

Back in the 1990s, that wasn't such a crazy idea. Broadband was just getting started, and Wi-Fi networks were still on the horizon
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Never owned a Xbox. Bought a Dreamcast and years later got the broadband modem, keyboard and mouse, but never used them.
 
Now that would have been funny and said at the same time. I just had a flashback to the BBS days.:)
 
it is funny thinking about how long ago this was developed. Broad band internet was still testing the waters.

if they didnt take advatage of broadband, live! wouldnt of had the head start it had.
 
Trimlock said:
it is funny thinking about how long ago this was developed. Broad band internet was still testing the waters.

if they didnt take advatage of broadband, live! wouldnt of had the head start it had.
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Dreamcast came with a detachable modem, which could be replaced with an Ethernet adapter. It wasn't well supported by a lot of games, but it wasn't a bad idea either. Microsoft could have easily added a modem along side the Ethernet port. Would have been best that way.

BTW, I wouldn't know what to call the original Xbox. It wasn't successful at all. Back then it was the PS2 that destroyed the market, and nothing else came close to it. GameCube was at least selling, but the Xbox was doing horrible. Enough to say that Microsoft lost more money with it then they made.

It wasn't until Xbox 360 where we could say Microsoft produced a successful game console.
 
Ashbringer said:
It wasn't until Xbox 360 where we could say Microsoft produced a successful game console.
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This is arguably true. A lot of factors combined to put the second attempt at a gaming console successful for Microsoft including arrogance on the part of Sony regarding pricing.

Does anyone remember this drama:

http://www.joystiq.com/2005/07/06/sony-wants-you-to-earn-that-playstation-3/

That being said, Kutaragi's comments continue to make us nervous. Just how much is the PlayStation 3 going to cost? What's the average gamer's breaking point?
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Sony apparently found that breaking point, eh? Between that pricing thing and the sad selection of games that persisted for quite some time thanks, in part, to Microsoft's efforts at handing out money hats to developers for exclusive titles, the Playstation was doomed to lose the top spot with the current generation. Only time will tell what happens next with new consoles on the horizon.
 
Many/most people I know didn't start getting broadband until around 2002 or 2003, so this idea isn't that strange for a console that launched in 2001.
 
Cmdrmonkey said:
Many/most people I know didn't start getting broadband until around 2002 or 2003, so this idea isn't that strange for a console that launched in 2001.
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The ethernet port and hard drive were the main reason i bought into the Xbox platform. It doesnt surprise me that Bill "i almost missed the internet" Gates failed to realize the need for it.
 
Ashbringer said:
Dreamcast came with a detachable modem, which could be replaced with an Ethernet adapter. It wasn't well supported by a lot of games, but it wasn't a bad idea either. Microsoft could have easily added a modem along side the Ethernet port. Would have been best that way.

BTW, I wouldn't know what to call the original Xbox. It wasn't successful at all. Back then it was the PS2 that destroyed the market, and nothing else came close to it. GameCube was at least selling, but the Xbox was doing horrible. Enough to say that Microsoft lost more money with it then they made.

It wasn't until Xbox 360 where we could say Microsoft produced a successful game console.
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xbox sold 24 million to the gamecubes 21.74 the xbox was second to the PS2 but those numbers include all the repurchasing of the ps2 as it was revised much like the current gen i owned a first gen PS2 POS had to replace it with a slim sound familiar. Still own 4 original xbox's they mod nicely my launch day dreamcast and a original gc with the HD output. the modem on the DC was ahead of its time. The original xbox is a very reliable pirce of hardware much like the DC was cant say the same for the PS2 or PS3 and other newer consoles.
 
Ashbringer said:
Back then it was the PS2 that destroyed the market, and nothing else came close to it. GameCube was at least selling, but the Xbox was doing horrible. Enough to say that Microsoft lost more money with it then they made.
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I don't know about all this... I think the original xbox did moderately well. I remember tuning into Tech TV while this thing was being launched and I remember there being plenty of excitement. And then Halo happened. And then LIVE.

:confused:
 
Lesson learned... no leader, no matter how awesome he is has the right ideas 100% of the time. It pays to listen to your peons sometimes.
 
colinstu said:
I don't know about all this... I think the original xbox did moderately well. I remember tuning into Tech TV while this thing was being launched and I remember there being plenty of excitement. And then Halo happened. And then LIVE.

:confused:
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it did very well everywhere but japan.
 
HisSvt76 said:
xbox sold 24 million to the gamecubes 21.74 the xbox was second to the PS2 but those numbers include all the repurchasing of the ps2 as it was revised much like the current gen i owned a first gen PS2 POS had to replace it with a slim sound familiar. Still own 4 original xbox's they mod nicely my launch day dreamcast and a original gc with the HD output. the modem on the DC was ahead of its time. The original xbox is a very reliable pirce of hardware much like the DC was cant say the same for the PS2 or PS3 and other newer consoles.
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At that time Xbox didn't sell well. Maybe nowadays it does, and it maybe due to the success of the 360. Also because of the cost to make the original Xbox, Microsoft did lose a lot of money with it. Why you think they didn't always guarantee to include a hard drive in the 360 version? Also why Microsoft didn't go with Nvidia on the 360.

Xbox failed to capture the Japanese developers, which back then was a big deal. Nowadays it doesn't matter cause all the big game titles come from American developers. Xbox mostly got PC titles and Dreamcast titles. The PC titles suffered cause graphically they were meant for the PC, and the Dreamcast games were old. Who owned a Xbox but didn't have a Dreamcast?

I doubt the PS2 was as much of a POS as the 360. How many people you think had to repurchase Xbox 360's with a red ring of death? I still got my old fat PS2 working with no problems. The success of this console was just amazing. About 154.4 million sold, and I'm sure continue to sell. The PS3 suffered so long in sales cause the PS2 wouldn't die.
 
Good call there, not giving it a modem after all, I've been on a fiber-optic broadband since late 1996.
colinstu said:
I don't know about all this... I think the original xbox did moderately well. I remember tuning into Tech TV while this thing was being launched and I remember there being plenty of excitement. And then Halo happened. And then LIVE.

:confused:
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Nah, Xbox went with losses during all it's years and didn't earn enough money for Microsoft to cover it's losses and investments. Same with the 360 for the first few years, it was wasn't until 2008 or maybe 2009 the Xbox Division was at 0, and since they been making profit. It sure takes an extreme amount of time and money to successfully launch a new console brand :p

The Xbox also had an extremely bad start outside of the US, noone bought it. While they happily sold the Xbox at loss in the US, they tried to sell it without any loss in Europe. After half a year of no Euro sales, they then cut the price in half, making it more similiar to the US price, and people started to buy it to some extent. The Xbox was very much a US thing, and while the 360 been fairly successful outside of the US, the US is still easily the place with the most 360 sales.
 
Actually in 2001, a modem wasn't really out of step with reality. How many households had broadband then. But in time after debate Bill gave in, and that's a sign of a thoughtful person.

I believe that William Gates is the greatest man of our time. Without government intervention nothing could have stopped Microsoft from world domination. That said, as much as I hate that my favorite company and personal hero were knocked down a few pegs, it was necessary. Bill is a technical and business genius and he was a bit out of control and needed to be rained in. But still, what this man has done has touched everything I believe to benefit of all humanity and at the same time he became rich beyond rich beyond imagination.
 
HisSvt76 said:
xbox sold 24 million to the gamecubes 21.74 the xbox was second to the PS2 but those numbers include all the repurchasing of the ps2 as it was revised much like the current gen i owned a first gen PS2 POS had to replace it with a slim sound familiar. Still own 4 original xbox's they mod nicely my launch day dreamcast and a original gc with the HD output. the modem on the DC was ahead of its time. The original xbox is a very reliable pirce of hardware much like the DC was cant say the same for the PS2 or PS3 and other newer consoles.
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So even if we divide the PS2s 150 million units by 2 as "everyone bought a slim" we are left with 75 million over 3 times as many. All the other revisions were minor internal changes. Plus who the hell would buy a slim over the original? It was ugly and had a weird drive. Plus everyone bought 4 xboxs to mod so that means it was more like 6 million. :p

The orignal xbox was no more reliable than the PS2. It was no 360, but it's a 5% electronics device like any other.

The reason the xbox probably didn't do very well was the shitty payed for p2p games and lack of interesting content. If you walked into a game shop at the time there was a 2 shop walls of PS2 games and a single row of xbox titles in the corner huddled with the half row of gamecube games. All of the big titles went with the popular platform, and the xbox just got rather generic racing/shooting titles (stilll does, but now all consoles seems to).
 
unfortunately, consoles still don't have much more than 640k of RAM because noone would ever need more than that.
 
Ashbringer said:
At that time Xbox didn't sell well. Maybe nowadays it does, and it maybe due to the success of the 360. Also because of the cost to make the original Xbox, Microsoft did lose a lot of money with it.
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That's odd, we sold the hell out of XBOX's at retail, among certain key demographics it was king, and it ended up being the #2 console. MS lost money on it because they were playing the long game.
 
Paul_Johnson said:
Unfortunately, people keep repeating something he never said.
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It happens. Al Gore never said he invented the Internet. Sarah Palin never said she could see Russia from her house.Barack Obama was born in the US according to every document and account there is.

The truth will set you free but often lies supplant truth which is why no one is truly free.
 
heatlesssun said:
I believe that William Gates is the greatest man of our time. Without government intervention nothing could have stopped Microsoft from world domination. That said, as much as I hate that my favorite company and personal hero were knocked down a few pegs, it was necessary. Bill is a technical and business genius and he was a bit out of control and needed to be rained in. But still, what this man has done has touched everything I believe to benefit of all humanity and at the same time he became rich beyond rich beyond imagination.
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wut?? that glass wearing smiling motherfucker is full mad! now he want to destroy the whole fucking planet and kill everything in it! like, spending billions to reduce global hunger and cure aids and general endemic and infectious diseases?? then what? 25 billion fucking people in less than a decade??? no way bro, theres normal mad like hitler and stalin and theres Bill! that mofo is mad+ with a raging boner on it! is obviously intentional because nobody is that dumb! jesus!
 
Paul_Johnson said:
That's odd, we sold the hell out of XBOX's at retail, among certain key demographics it was king, and it ended up being the #2 console. MS lost money on it because they were playing the long game.
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Xbox sold very well in the states, but that's about it. Europe didn't jump right on it, and Japan didn't want it. Back then, if you didn't have the Japanese market, you were doomed. Oddly, the Xbox 360 isn't doing well in Japan either, but because it's doing so well here in the states and Europe, it really doesn't matter.

Microsoft lost money on the Xbox because it cost too much to make. Too little games were sold on the Xbox. A lot of people did mod these machines as they were known as legacy free PCs. Just to give you an idea how huge the modding community was for it, the name XBMC wasn't just for show. XBMC actually originated from the Xbox, and was probably the best reason to own one.

The #1 reason I owned a Xbox was for the same reason. Sure I played Halo 2, but I mostly used it for XBMC. Before I got around to building a HTPC.
 
D4rkn3ss said:
wut?? that glass wearing smiling motherfucker is full mad! now he want to destroy the whole fucking planet and kill everything in it! like, spending billions to reduce global hunger and cure aids and general endemic and infectious diseases?? then what? 25 billion fucking people in less than a decade??? no way bro, theres normal mad like hitler and stalin and theres Bill! that mofo is mad+ with a raging boner on it! is obviously intentional because nobody is that dumb! jesus!
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Comparing Gates to Hitler and Stalin is as crazy as it gets.
 
D4rkn3ss said:
wut?? that glass wearing smiling motherfucker is full mad! now he want to destroy the whole fucking planet and kill everything in it! like, spending billions to reduce global hunger and cure aids and general endemic and infectious diseases?? then what? 25 billion fucking people in less than a decade??? no way bro, theres normal mad like hitler and stalin and theres Bill! that mofo is mad+ with a raging boner on it! is obviously intentional because nobody is that dumb! jesus!
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Lol, did I stumble into the Yahoo comments section?
 
peanuthead said:
Now that would have been funny and said at the same time. I just had a flashback to the BBS days.:)
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Not really. Back in the days when the original xbox came out, they would have likely reached a larger audience of online gamers had they included a modem rather than an Ethernet controller. I don't remember too many of my friends having broadband back in those days. I know I didn't, I used freeWWWeb (or something like that, forgot the exact name) as my ISP.
 
Ashbringer said:
Xbox sold very well in the states, but that's about it. Europe didn't jump right on it, and Japan didn't want it. Back then, if you didn't have the Japanese market, you were doomed. Oddly, the Xbox 360 isn't doing well in Japan either, but because it's doing so well here in the states and Europe, it really doesn't matter.

Microsoft lost money on the Xbox because it cost too much to make. Too little games were sold on the Xbox. A lot of people did mod these machines as they were known as legacy free PCs. Just to give you an idea how huge the modding community was for it, the name XBMC wasn't just for show. XBMC actually originated from the Xbox, and was probably the best reason to own one.

The #1 reason I owned a Xbox was for the same reason. Sure I played Halo 2, but I mostly used it for XBMC. Before I got around to building a HTPC.
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Like I said. That's odd, we sold the hell out of XBOX's at retail, among certain key demographics it was king, and it ended up being the #2 console. MS lost money on it because they were playing the long game.

PS-You aren't going to tell me anything new about the XBOX community, so you can skip the attitude.
 
Ashbringer said:
Why you think they didn't always guarantee to include a hard drive in the 360 version?
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Cost. Remember, they were able to rape you back then for the cost of a memory card as well.

Also why Microsoft didn't go with Nvidia on the 360.
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They probably got tired of nVidia's bitching since nVidia had to eat the cost of a whole bunch of eventually worthless southbridge chips thanks to the bootload hacks (starting with "bunnie"). The hack was one major reason for the 1.1 hardware revision (as well as subsequent revisions), which included replacing the southbridge which had partial bootstrap hardcoded into it along with the encryption that was able to be decrypted so the bootstrap could be hijacked. ATi may have also made a better offer.

It was also part of Microsoft's move from just licensing key parts from nVidia and paying Intel for the CPU to working with IBM and ATi to design components that Microsoft would flat out own the design to specifically for the 360.
 
Ashbringer said:
Back then, if you didn't have the Japanese market, you were doomed. Oddly, the Xbox 360 isn't doing well in Japan either, but because it's doing so well here in the states and Europe, it really doesn't matter.
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They weren't exactly crucial, but Japan is an oddity game market-wise anyways. Part of the problem was that the Xbox had a lot of FPS as a "selling point" but not enough in the categories that dominate the Japanese market. Nowadays, Japanese devs can't seem to get their heads out of their asses and are now becoming more and more clueless as to what the gaming community wants (in general and even their own primary market). For example, Capcom HQ had made some pretty weird decisions on how it will have devs handle new IPs vs. established franchises (this affects in-house and contracted studios that work with Capcom).

Microsoft lost money on the Xbox because it cost too much to make. Too little games were sold on the Xbox.
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Not really. They were using mostly off-the-shelf parts. One big reason for the major loss of money in the Xbox division was due to start up funding. They needed to put together a team from scratch, along with marketing and whatnot ate up a huge amount of money. R&D costs money too.

I'm not sure what you mean too few games were sold for the Xbox, since there were several hundred titles across the regions, and a decent portion of those made "best-seller" status. Not sure where you're getting some of your facts...
 
Ashbringer said:
Dreamcast came with a detachable modem, which could be replaced with an Ethernet adapter. It wasn't well supported by a lot of games, but it wasn't a bad idea either. Microsoft could have easily added a modem along side the Ethernet port. Would have been best that way.

BTW, I wouldn't know what to call the original Xbox. It wasn't successful at all. Back then it was the PS2 that destroyed the market, and nothing else came close to it. GameCube was at least selling, but the Xbox was doing horrible. Enough to say that Microsoft lost more money with it then they made.

It wasn't until Xbox 360 where we could say Microsoft produced a successful game console.
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It really wouldn't have been best imo. You would have really slow internet, and they would end up having to be providers for it. In the end having a modem would have hurt live instead of let it flourish and at the same time help broadband have a purpose. 56k just doesn't have the bandwidth to properly allow 16 people play fps all the time.
 
The modem was decided against in 2001 so to include one must have been planned long before that point, most likely in the last millenium. This was 11 years ago and dial-up is still in wide use, isn't it something like 10% or more in the US?

And what about that optical drive, what was Bill smoking? Optical drives are so last millenia too..
 
temujin987 said:
unfortunately, consoles still don't have much more than 640k of RAM because noone would ever need more than that.
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We talking about the 640K *BASE* memory?

Whatever happened to the 640k base memory? Did it go away with the transition to Windows 2000 or is it still there in some way or another?

Damn the days when I had startup floppy disks for each DOS game to get as much free base memory as possible.
 
In 2001 we still had free dial-up like Juno and Netzero. Didn't congress ban them or something around 2002?
 
I remember how gaming magazines critized the XBOX for not having a modem. Not that many had broadband when it launched. It seemed crazy to only support broadband.
 
westrock2000 said:
We talking about the 640K *BASE* memory?

Whatever happened to the 640k base memory? Did it go away with the transition to Windows 2000 or is it still there in some way or another?

Damn the days when I had startup floppy disks for each DOS game to get as much free base memory as possible.
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It went away with 32-bit protected mode operating systems. (OS/2, WinNT, Linux, etc). 640k is a by-product of IBM reserving the top 384k of addressable memory for BIOS and option ROMs in the original IBM PC.
 
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