Power On: The Story of Xbox — Video Series Documentary on the History of Xbox

[Romier S]

This was the first thing shown at the 20th celebration today and I think it looks pretty damned cool.

 

 

[JFo]

EDIT: All six parts are now available for steaming. Here are the YouTube videos for those interested.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have not watched any of it yet, but this looks like a pretty beefy documentary — six episodes in total, averaging around 40 minutes in length. I’m very interested in seeing how this turned out.

[JFo]

Heads up, @Romier S. When they get to the part where they talk about how great the first Kinect was, be sure not to roll your eyes so far back into your head that they can't come back out, okay?

[Romier S]

Ha, I'll try.:)

 

Threads merged, too.

[Romier S]

Oops!

 

 

[Romier S]

Three episodes in thus far. This is really, really good! Some surprising candor and a great snapshot in time of how the OG Xbox came to be.

[ChrisBardon]

Finished this off today, and it's really good.  The amount of transparency around things like the red ring and Xbox one launches is more than I expected to see.  They know where they messed up, and aren't afraid to talk about it.  It was neat to see the actual explanation of what caused the RROD, and learning that they didn't have final silicon until early 2005 was absolutely insane. 

 

I do wish they'd spent a little more time around the 360 and XB1 development though.  There was obviously a big focus on the original box, which I get, but I wanted to know what the fight was to define a lot of the 360 specs.  Why custom silicon after making such a big deal about standard parts?  Was there pushback to having a free tier of Live?  What about the decision to mandate things like HDTV support and support for core XBL features?  In that case, you had Microsoft imposing its vision on the industry, and it worked.  On the flip side, you have the XB1, where nothing seemed to work.  Was the entertainment push really just a money play?  How did they get the price so wrong?  What made them think that would work-were there meetings with all the cable and streaming operators that made them think this was a good idea?  Didn't anyone on the games side tell them that their approach was bad out of the gate, or was this just a complete marketing failure? 

[MastaRedSnappa]

I really enjoyed that Xbox documentary. I honestly had forgotten about the RROD on the 360, even though I returned mine to get it repaired. The 360 was still my favorite console of that generation. It was crazy to see how close the original Xbox and subsequent models were on the brink of disaster (many of which were self-inflicted). It's hard to imagine Sony or Nintendo agreeing to a documentary like this that highlights their lowlights.