Xbox and Microsoft’s DNA
David Bau has posted a thoughtful story about what may have caused the Vista debacle.
David, now at Google, used to work at Microsoft. He’s an interesting guy. He may be wrong about exactly what’s wrong at Microsoft, but I think he’s right at the 30,000 foot level.
[tease]
Is the real Microsoft still around today? Oh sure.
The true Microsoft was in danger of vanishing after the 1995 Netscape IPO spun everybody’s head around with thoughts of equity market dollars. But in 1999, old TCP engineer and rising star J Allard left IIS and the whole Internet thing to revive the old Microsoft again.
Maybe J understood the truth about Microsoft. The company is not about growth, or the enterprise, or “information at your fingertips.” The true Microsoft is about setting up a cool box of technology on the dining room table to show off to your buddies. In 1975, it was about the Altair; later the Apple II, TRS-80, Atari 800, Commodore 64; then the Macintosh; and then for a very very long time the IBM PC and its clones.
In 2006, we call it the Xbox.
[tease]
…. The Xbox team goes around the company stealing the best code and best people and best ideas. They bring these treasures back to their own private campus to use for their own projects. And then they close their doors and tell the rest of the company, “now leave us alone.”
Why? Because Xbox is the only division at the company that is capable of motivating itself for the long haul.
And why is that? Because Xbox is the only division of the company that is still working on the Altair vision: a computer in every home.
Got a computer in your home already, you say? That’s not enough. That old PC is not a a computer you’d whip out on the dining room table. You need an Xbox in every home too. More computers in every home. More, more, more. More of something different. More of the same.