May 14, 2005
Xbox 360 Leader Interviewed
Wired has an interview article with Mr. Allard, the leader of the Xbox 360 team. He's quite an interesting character, one of the few Microsoft employees who can curse off Bill Gates and use an Apple Powerbook, but be lauded for it. Not to mention the fact he is driven by wanting the creator of the Sony Playstation to resign in defeat.And while coming out with a new console later this year gives Microsoft a one-year head start on the next-gen PlayStation - allowing Microsoft to court game developers and convert gamers - it's not exactly a flawless strategy. Sega introduced Dreamcast in 1999, a full year before the arrival of PS2. Consumers stayed away, and Sega never recovered.
Allard is not exactly your typical Microsoft employee. Spend a bit of time with the man and you begin to see him as a wag on the loose inside the Microsoft campus, saying and doing his own thing regardless of whether it jibes with corporate strategy. He uses an Apple PowerBook, fires off rambling, profanity-laced emails to his superiors, and has a knack for, well, thinking different. He also has the respect of Gates and Ballmer.
Everyone at the meeting agreed that initially Xbox wouldn't make a dime. In the first year, the console retailed for $300 and Microsoft lost as much as $125 on each unit sold. "Yeah. We took it in the shorts," Allard says. "The first time around was just a bath. A lesson. Practice."
The mission: to inspire the group's rank and file. "Most people put down flowery, make-the-world-a-better-place, Miss America types of things," Allard says. "I wrote: What gets me out of bed and into the office every day is the thought of Ken Kutaragi's resignation letter, framed, hanging next to my desk."
