Microsoft Was Moments Away from Buying Square in '99|You Should Read This New Making of Xbox Book

[Cheerilee]

Bear in mind that Square was also considering a merger with Enix around this time, but CEO Hisashi Suzuki was hesitant because he thought that Square was on the rise and Enix was getting the better end of the deal.

And then Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within hit, and cost Square a boatload of money. Suzuki immediately stabilized things by selling 20% of Square to Sony, but the impact spooked Enix, and Yoichi Wada took this opportunity to stage a coup, siezed the company from Suzuki, fired Hironobu Sakaguchi, and merged Square with Enix. And then he ran SquareEnix into the ground, year after year, until a couple of years ago SquareEnix was worth less than Square by itself was after the FF:TSW disaster, and Wada quietly retired while Suzuki mocked him on Twitter.

 

[VincentMatts]

I'm glad that Square thing didn't happen. I can't imagine MS owning Square being a great partnership. But we'll never know.

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Square is not a company that excites me when i think about what games im looking forward to. Kinda glad it didnt happen

 

[Zappy]

yeah, not even. "employment benefits" mean nothing when it comes to keeping a culture

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I suspect I'd prefer to be treated well as an employee and not be forced into inhuman working practices over pretty much anything else. Perhaps that's just me.

 

[Imperfected]

Hey, um, these contract negotiations are going great, but you missed something. Yeah, you missed the part where you give me more money.

Classic.

 

[flkRaven]

Would the Xbox have succeeded in Japan if they owned Square?

 

[DieH@rd]

"we want more money"

lol

 

[Wracu]

The Final Fantasy series has been wildly inconsistent graphically since it went 3D. (FFVII was ugly as heck compared to the kind of graphics you saw on PC and N64 at the time.) Not just because the games were held back by hardware -- the actual asset quality was all over the place. Texture quality can be absolutely dismal. And model quality is all over the place. This dog in Lightning Returns is the most notorious example.

You really think Microsoft would allow this? You think their executives would sit there and say, "Yes, this is acceptable asset quality for a AAA videogame in 2013. I don't see any problem with this."

Alternatively, imagine working for hypothetical MS-owned Square Enix and showing NieR: Automata to Microsoft and it looks like this. One of the many reasons why western AAA games cost so much to make is because they generally don't have textures like this. And I think this would have been a sticking point with MS-owned Square.

Final Fantasy XII and its atrocious pop-in and tiny, empty levels would have been met by raised eyebrows by 2006 Microsoft. Sure, the pop-in likely would have been fixed thanks to Xbox hardware having more headroom, but it's reflective of the fundamental difference in development priorities.

Final Fantasy XII fans might not see any problem with its graphics. But the game was essentially a generation behind high end Xbox titles. It was released in 2006. The same month as The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. There is no universe in which Microsoft would have been happy with its graphics.

edit: In case some are confused, I'm not saying that the Final Fantasy series has "bad graphics". I am saying that they did not meet the minimum asset/visual fidelity quality a company like Microsoft would likely demand. In order to make a game that would meet Microsoft's expectations of visual quality -- this would cost a lot of money. These games would need to sell more copies to make their money back.

Graphics are just the tip of the iceberg. If MS owned Square, I doubt they'd be releasing games without full voice acting. Heaps of FFXII's dialogue is just text. That would never have flown under MS. But again, fixing this would have cost more money. And more money means the game has to sell more copies. And if doesn't sell enough copies MS would be unhappy.

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I'm late getting back to this thread, but my God are you delusional. Step back for your health.

Let's ignore the larger delusion of this post and just examine your attempts at cherry-picked screens and examples.

1). You've criticized FFXII for anything relating to voice acting.

2). You picked out a zoomed in NPC from the third game in a series (second knock off). FFXIII, regardless of what you think about it as a whole, is one of the most gorgeous games of that generation. Sure, there are technically better games. Few if any that surpass the overall presentation. But you wanna talk a single NPC in a cheap cash in.

3). You're trying to criticize Nier: Automata as if you even had a point it would reflect on Square in this weird way. First off, one of the best games of this generation. Never would have seen the light of day at MS, much less receive this mythical infinity-billions of funding. Nevermind this wasn't even coded by SE. Platinum did the game in partnership and under the direction of Yoko Taro. This game is not going for mind-blowing graphics and didn't have the budget anyway (to repeat here: this game wouldn't even exist under MS).

See if you can be more disingenuous next time. It will be difficult.

 

[Parenegade]

There's nothing nonsensical about being bitterly disappointed in Bioware post-KOTOR.

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They created Mass Effect the greatest Western RPG series of all time .

 

[Wracu]

They created Mass Effect the greatest Western RPG series of all time .

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HAHAHAHAHA

The first one is interesting. The rest are all degrees of Trainwreck. And even the first one falls apart if you think about it (that's a problem when you're banking so hard on story).

I mean go play Baldur's Gate. Same "company" even. Far greater. Might actually live up to that description. You are crazy and/or under the age of 20 if you think that.

Edit: We could further debate whether 2 or 3 are even pretending to be actual RPGs... Which is a problem if you want to call it the greatest RPG anything. If you had a choice would you rather drop me alive into acid or give me 50 billion dollars? This might be a dialogue choice in the next Mass Effect... Oh right, nevermind.

 

[Dreamboum]

Bear in mind that Square was also considering a merger with Enix around this time, but CEO Hisashi Suzuki was hesitant because he thought that Square was on the rise and Enix was getting the better end of the deal.

And then Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within hit, and cost Square a boatload of money. Suzuki immediately stabilized things by selling 20% of Square to Sony, but the impact spooked Enix, and Yoichi Wada took this opportunity to stage a coup, siezed the company from Suzuki, fired Hironobu Sakaguchi, and merged Square with Enix. And then he ran SquareEnix into the ground, year after year, until a couple of years ago SquareEnix was worth less than Square by itself was after the FF:TSW disaster, and Wada quietly retired while Suzuki mocked him on Twitter.

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this is fucking funny

 

[Parenegade]

HAHAHAHAHA

The first one is interesting. The rest are all degrees of Trainwreck. And even the first one falls apart if you think about it (that's a problem when you're banking so hard on story).

I mean go play Baldur's Gate. Same "company" even. Far greater. Might actually live up to that description. You are crazy and/or under the age of 20 if you think that.

Edit: We could further debate whether 2 or 3 are even pretending to be actual RPGs... Which is a problem if you want to call it the greatest RPG anything. If you had a choice would you rather drop me alive into acid or give me 50 billion dollars? This might be a dialogue choice in the next Mass Effect... Oh right, nevermind.

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I'm not going to debate you since you insulted me right away but Mass Effect 2 is a top 25 rated game all time on Metacritic and dominated GotY awards including NeoGAF's. Clearly you don't disagree with just me.

 

[DangerMouse]

Any proof of that? I've never seen anyone proclaim anything like that, not even Level-5. Can you provide any quotes?

The closest to that that I can think of was From Software saying that Ninja Blade would probably be their last Xbox 360 exclusive, unless Microsoft agrees to foot the bill (because by that point Xbox 360 was failing hard in Japan), and even that's quite a bit different to what you're suggesting.

Microsoft never had anything to do with the third game (Cry On), apart from the fact that it was supposed to be an exclusive game for their console. Cry On was always going to be published by AQ Interactive.

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I'm pretty sure you've seen it before in articles from back then that had tried to read between the lines of some of the interviews following the fallout of those projects, as well as the odd sudden lack of continuing interest in such titles following the announcement of FFXIII as a multiplatform title at E3. I mean they'll never be overt, but directly following the cancellation, Level-5, for example, got the closest as I recall them relatively indirectly intonating how much it effected them that it happened so late. Not overtly of course. You're right though, I did overstate by the "never work with them again," since there's no real way to know for sure if any bridges truly got burnt or not since it became less financially viable for these companies to approach each other again anyway for the same reason you said regarding From Software as well back then, the 360 failing hard in Japan. Also, to be fair these old reports were often articles conveying Japanese interviews, that were originally written in Japanese, so it's possible that some of the reading-between-the-lines context was by the authors and not in the original. That said, the track record of these projects and their failures and similar outcomes doesn't exactly go unnoticed either. Including how much more the aftermath of such things likely effect the Japanese dev compared to the massive Microsoft.

Can't find the old articles anymore but I definitely recall that it was reported multiple times back during that era that lack of interest (from both the market and platform holder) along with economic issues facing similar games was the catalyst for the project becoming vaporware. So while they didn't directly control anything to do with the game that always sounded to me like their wavering interest in such titles played a big role in the company and developer becoming less confident in producing the title. The only one that I found that still seems to exist referencing it was the old Gamespot one that indeed mentions economic/funding and market issues.

Even more than that I wonder what the impact of not having Spirits WIthin release and bomb at the box office would have on CGI feature films. Imagine if someone else would have stepped up to the plate instead and had success.

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I dunno. Doing that movie was clearly one of Sakaguchi's real passions so I think the opportunity for making one could have been part of any deal or perhaps a deal breaker.

 

[DemonSwordsman]

HAHAHAHAHA

The first one is interesting. The rest are all degrees of Trainwreck. And even the first one falls apart if you think about it (that's a problem when you're banking so hard on story).

I mean go play Baldur's Gate. Same "company" even. Far greater. Might actually live up to that description. You are crazy and/or under the age of 20 if you think that.

Edit: We could further debate whether 2 or 3 are even pretending to be actual RPGs... Which is a problem if you want to call it the greatest RPG anything. If you had a choice would you rather drop me alive into acid or give me 50 billion dollars? This might be a dialogue choice in the next Mass Effect... Oh right, nevermind.

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I don't know if you are just delusional or really blinded by nostalgia . Yes Baldur's Gate is amazing, but Mass Effect 1 and 2 are considered one of the best WRPGs out there, pretty much universally. That's just not arguable.

 

[Wracu]

I'm not going to debate you since you insulted me right away but Mass Effect 2 is a top 25 rated game all time on Metacritic and dominated GotY awards including NeoGAF's. Clearly you don't disagree with just me.

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Good for you for falling for the hype.

I don't think this is the place to get into WRPG aggregate review scores (or generally big budget review scores period) in the last 15 years, but let's just say that isn't an argument that holds much water.

You have claimed Mass Effect is the single greatest WRPG series of all time. As you're loosely defining "RPG series" here, I will too.

Have you played any of the following:

Baldur's Gate
Fallout (1+2)
The recent Shadowrun games
The recent Divinity OS games
Warcraft
Diablo
Wizardry
KOTOR itself
The Elder Scrolls
Planescape Torment (not a series really but we're counting it)
...we could go on

You really think Mass Effect is clearly better than all of these games? That if, reviewed in the same environment, these older games wouldn't have commensurate review aggregates (not that it matters)? It's fine to like Mass Effect or Dragon Age. It's also fine to point how far from their best they are. This is without even mentioning crap like Jade (9.9 isn't high enough) Empire.

I'm not sure if I like "9.9 isn't high enough" or "the only problem is it's too perfect" more.

And Square/Enix would still have been shuttered years ago if MS had bought them. A point I don't seem to be alone in sharing.

 

[Wracu]

I don't know if you are just delusional or really blinded by nostalgia . Yes Baldur's Gate is amazing, but Mass Effect 1 and 2 are considered one of the best WRPGs out there, pretty much universally. That's just not arguable.

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It absolutely is. Baldur's Gate 2 destroys any Mass Effect game in every possible way except technical graphics fidelity.

Better dialogue
Better writing
Better story
Better combat
More challenge
More atmosphere
5000x more content
Literally more and better everything. Still. Even today.

This is not nostalgia. If any of us here are succumbing to that, it's the ME stans and their dead executed series. Even if you worship the first two games you're going to have to admit the cluster fuck that has followed.

Further, none of this is to say ME is pure garbage. There's something there to love, at least in the first. But it, and everything for years prior and proceeding, is a very far cry from their best. If you can't see how the last ~ 15 years of Bioware is a slow-motion horror show to people who were gaming in the CRPG golden age... Whatever. At least the bad third person shooting in ME is better than most of the combat they've put out post-KOTOR.

 

[Gundam]

HAHAHAHAHA

The first one is interesting. The rest are all degrees of Trainwreck. And even the first one falls apart if you think about it (that's a problem when you're banking so hard on story).

I mean go play Baldur's Gate. Same "company" even. Far greater. Might actually live up to that description. You are crazy and/or under the age of 20 if you think that.

Edit: We could further debate whether 2 or 3 are even pretending to be actual RPGs... Which is a problem if you want to call it the greatest RPG anything. If you had a choice would you rather drop me alive into acid or give me 50 billion dollars? This might be a dialogue choice in the next Mass Effect... Oh right, nevermind.

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I gotta say, this post is all sorts of crazy.

 

[Remo Williams]

Can't find the old articles anymore but I definitely recall that it was reported multiple times back during that era that lack of interest (from both the market and platform holder) along with economic issues facing similar games was the catalyst for the project becoming vaporware. So while they didn't directly control anything to do with the game that always sounded to me like their wavering interest in such titles played a role in the company and developer becoming less confident in producing the title. The only one that I found that still seems to exist referencing it was the old Gamespot one that indeed mentions economic/funding and market issues.

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Yes, those were problematic times for AQ Interactive. Apart from Cry On, they had a few other unannounced Xbox 360 games in planning stages, but their own problems combined with the poor performance of Xbox 360 in Japan made sure that we would never even hear of them. At one point there were also rumors that the game was changing developers (from Cavia to Artoon), but that might not have been true. The game was finally canceled at the end of 2008, and at that point Microsoft hasn't given up on the Japanese market just yet, but regardless, they had no direct involvement with Cry On in the first place.

 

[Aters]

I will be honest here: Square would be better with MS than with Enix.

 

[DemonSwordsman]

It absolutely is. Baldur's Gate 2 destroys any Mass Effect game in every possible way except technical graphics fidelity.

Better dialogue
Better writing
Better story
Better combat
More challenge
More atmosphere
5000x more content
Literally more and better everything. Still. Even today.

This is not nostalgia. If any of us here are succumbing to that, it's the ME stans and their dead executed series. Even if you worship the first two games you're going to have to admit the cluster fuck that has followed.

Further, none of this is to say ME is pure garbage. There's something there to love, at least in the first. But it, and everything for years prior and proceeding, is a very far cry from their best. If you can't see how the last ~ 15 years of Bioware is a slow-motion horror show to people who were gaming in the CRPG golden age... Whatever. At least the bad third person shooting in ME is better than most of the combat they've put out post-KOTOR.

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Baldurs gate being better than ME doesn't make those games a trainwreck. You really cannot argue that the industry, fans and critics consider those games to be some of the best. Unless you want to live in denial.


Did bioware kill your dog or steal your gf or something? Because it looks like you have some personal vendetta.

 

[Wracu]

I'm not arguing that people believe it. Only that they're wrong.

Crash won Best Picture. That's a thing that happened.

But again, this is a pointlessly huge derail. Let's all be glad MS did not buy, and therefore doom, Square. If you want to argue something, argue that. I'd say it is fairly self evident.

 

[Dr. Feel Good]

Microsoft back then was incredibly interesting given it that it was almost eagerly trying to take the reigns from Sega and manage a worldwide appeal. Xbox today feels very different from what the strategy they were playing back then, and it kind of makes me sad. They used to be very experimental and court a wide variety of genres and games but they just fell into the dudebro culture and since Halo 2 I feel like it's always been what they have focused on. which money wise probably isn't the wrong decision but I feel has forced them into the corner they find themselves in now.

 

[Cheerilee]

I will be honest here: Square would be better with MS than with Enix.

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Enix never harmed Square in the slightest.

Yoichi Wada (from Square) harmed Square by taking Hisashi Suzuki's job, and then firing "Father of Final Fantasy" Hironobu Sakaguchi.

Sakaguchi may have caused Square some problems by making The Spirits Within, and he may have been "overrated" because his chosen directors contributed more to the best Square games than he did, but Sakaguchi was a businessman/artist who acted like a buffer between business and art and managed the flow of information between the two very effectively. After Wada got rid of Sakaguchi, business and art were allowed to clash directly, and Square's best artists were forced to either become businessmen or quit due to stress.

Enix suffered under Wada as well, having been reduced to nothing more than Dragon Quest. And where they hoped that Square could push DQ to FF7-style success in the West, nowadays we're lucky if DQ games are even released in America at all (although that's kind of been DQ's standard treatment in America since forever).

 

[Aters]

Enix never harmed Square in the slightest.

Yoichi Wada (from Square) harmed Square by taking Hisashi Suzuki's job, and then firing "Father of Final Fantasy" Hironobu Sakaguchi.

Sakaguchi may have caused Square some problems by making The Spirits Within, and he may have been "overrated" because his chosen directors contributed more to the best Square games than he did, but Sakaguchi was a businessman/artist who acted like a buffer between business and art and managed the flow of information between the two very effectively. After Wada got rid of Sakaguchi, business and art were allowed to clash directly, and Square's best artists were forced to either become businessmen or quit due to stress.

Enix suffered under Wada as well, having been reduced to nothing more than Dragon Quest. And where they hoped that Square could push DQ to FF7-style success in the West, nowadays we're lucky if DQ games are even released in America at all (although that's kind of been DQ's standard treatment in America since forever).

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Wada was CEO but he was not shareholder. None of his decisions would take effect if the big shareholder, which is on the Enix side didn't approve.

 

[UltraMagnus]

You even get how Nintendo, no matter how incredibly favorable a collaborative deal was, wouldn't work with MIcrosoft for how it would look like they "lost" to them.

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Any more on this part? I'd be curious to know what that was about.

 

[Deleted member 2171]

By the sounds of it MIcrosoft really wanted to work with them. Even with a buyout off the table Microsoft was willing to give NIntendo a certain number of royalty free games published per year and a $9 rate after that.

Nintendo was, at least early on, actually interested in some form of partnership too. Nintendo spent "two and a half days" working with the best MS engineers. When the Xbox was announced "they (Nintendo) knew everything about the technical details" of the console from those meetings.

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We actually learned about the name of Xbox Live from Peter Main. Nintendo even knew the name of their service and accidentally mentioned it in an interview, lol

 

[brain_stew]

Just had a look on Amazon.co.uk and both books are included with Kindle Unlimited and I can get a 30 day free trial. Should be good reading material for my New York trip.

Thanks, op.

 

[Marukoban]

I will be honest here: Square would be better with MS than with Enix.

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Well, we only know the result of Square Enix, not Square MS.
I think Wada is the biggest problem to Square, not the merger with Enix itself.
Under Wada's leadership, a lot of Square's once prestigious IP either has been left to the dust or had problematic development/vision.
SE has been doing better financially since he left and it has reflected in their market valuation.

 

[Nintex]

The part that's always missing from this story is 'who would run Microsoft Studios Japan'? Remember, this is right along the time that Seamus had to play drinking games with Japanese businessmen and they were utterly out of their element in these talks culture wise.
Say you have Square and Nintendo owned by Microsoft? The answer, I believe would've been Minoru Arakawa.

Around that time Nintendo was also in talks with Nokia for a partnership. That went up to Yamauchi for final approval after engineers from Nokia and Nintendo had already worked on prototypes.
Yamauchi met with Nokia's CEO and then decided to not go through with it.

The '99/00's were a strange time, when corporate America was more 'afraid' of Japan than China. China was still poor back then, the Apple boom also hadn't happened yet.
Microsoft was actually scared that crazy Ken Kutaragi would actually live up to his Matrix mumbojumbo and take-over the living room with the PS2.
SEGA for them was the writing on the wall on what would happen to Nintendo, Square and other companies if they didn't grab the rope Microsoft tossed at them.

I understand why Square doubled the price, 750 mil would've been a steal for the company and their IP. $1.5 billion may be pushing it but I would say the company could've easily been sold for at least billion.
I'm surprised they didn't push Sony and Microsoft into a bidding war. I'm even more surprised that Microsoft didn't just pay the full price.

 

[RooMHM]

How can people still believe Microsoft in gaming is a good thing seriously? They re the predator we never needed. A second but bigger EA.

 

[DiipuSurotu]

So Lost Odyssey could have been a real FF

 

[Melchiah]

Jebus, Microsoft tries to buy everything. I'm not surprised if a few a years later I will hear info about MS tries to buy Capcom during the PSP /3DS era because of Monster Hunter doing gangbusters.

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It's in their DNA. After all, they started it all with buying DOS in the beginning. I'm definitely glad the deal with Square didn't come true.

 

[DiipuSurotu]

Bear in mind that Square was also considering a merger with Enix around this time, but CEO Hisashi Suzuki was hesitant because he thought that Square was on the rise and Enix was getting the better end of the deal.

And then Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within hit, and cost Square a boatload of money. Suzuki immediately stabilized things by selling 20% of Square to Sony, but the impact spooked Enix, and Yoichi Wada took this opportunity to stage a coup, siezed the company from Suzuki, fired Hironobu Sakaguchi, and merged Square with Enix. And then he ran SquareEnix into the ground, year after year, until a couple of years ago SquareEnix was worth less than Square by itself was after the FF:TSW disaster, and Wada quietly retired while Suzuki mocked him on Twitter.

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this is fucking funny

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I still don't understand what went wrong with Wada... According to fortune-tellers it was going to be all right!

"[Square Enix CEO and president Yoichi] Wada took a couple of locations to a fortune teller named Pao," said Uematsu. "Pao said the Meguro space was not going to bring any fortune to the company, and pointed to Shinjuku. That's why he decided to move it there. I heard this directly from Wada."

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[Ludens]

Considering how MS has treated Japanese companies over the years, i dont even want to imagine such a scenario

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Yup, platinum games is a good example.

 

[Bahamut]

Would have probably cemented 90's Square as the golden age...

Glad it didn't happen.

 

[elektrixx]

I wish that book was on Audible. Now I'll never know what's in it.

 

[Segafreak]

Would Square still be alive today if it happened? I doubt much of the talent would've stayed long with them and joined Enix, Sony or other pubs. Something tells me they'd be Lionheaded after FFVII-5 bombed.

Thanks for the recommendation, will buy both books.

 

[VinFTW]

How can people still believe Microsoft in gaming is a good thing seriously? They re the predator we never needed. A second but bigger EA.

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Jesus.

 

[Parenegade]

How can people still believe Microsoft in gaming is a good thing seriously? They re the predator we never needed. A second but bigger EA.

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Woo boy...

 

[Dancrane212]

Any more on this part? I'd be curious to know what that was about.

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I mentioned it a bit more here.

By the sounds of it MIcrosoft really wanted to work with them. Even with a buyout off the table Microsoft was willing to give NIntendo a certain number of royalty free games published per year and a $9 rate after that.

Nintendo was, at least early on, actually interested in some form of partnership too. Nintendo spent "two and a half days" working with the best MS engineers. When the Xbox was announced "they (Nintendo) knew everything about the technical details" of the console from those meetings.

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Rick Thompson quote.

I used to drive the guys crazy because all they wanted to do was invent the future, you know, typical classic Microsoft guys, and I was kind of the anti-Christ going out to Nintendo and saying I'd rather buy them... In my mind we should have paid $25 billion for the company, rather than start this from scratch internally.

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[SpinlyLimbs]

Would not have been a good thing. Western companies working with Eastern companies and vice versa very rarely goes well. Just look at Project Hammer.

 

[drtomoe123]

Replaying through Chrono Cross lately has got me thinking about alternate worlds and what could have been -- this is a great example.

 

[Cipherr]

PC developers tried to get the original xbox to ship with a kb and mouse. You can't make this stuff up. That's just crazy enough to believe too.

 

[Cranster]

Would the Xbox have succeeded in Japan if they owned Square?

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Nope, Japanese gamers would have been outraged as they simply just don't like Xbox.

 

[SpinlyLimbs]

Would the Xbox have succeeded in Japan if they owned Square?

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No. I would recommend reading some of the articles on the Japanese reasons for not liking the Xbox ("It's black and that's bad"). The original Xbox could have games that gave you immortality and they probably still wouldn't like it.

 

[ninnanuam]

Put me down as thinking this would have been very interesting. So much time has passed so it's impossible to know how it would have played out and how things would go.

But square being in the room during the design of the OG Xbox (and the 99 date shows its possible) or 360 may have led to some crazy shit that may have altered the course of modern gaming.

Or thinking about the timeline, the Dreamcast only launched in the west in 99. I think MS announcing square games for the DC at that time would have maybe got alot of the PS people to at least consider a DC. Maybe that keeps MS out of the living room? Who fucking knows.

So many interesting potential ripples.

 

[duckroll]

Let's not kid ourselves. MS doesn't hang on to dead weight. If they bought into Square in 1999, by 2001 they would have been trying to offload their share. Would have just ended up with Square Enix anyway, since MS was never going to hang around with an unappealing Japanese company. Just like Square EA never worked out, Square MS wouldn't work out. The business culture, expectations, and market scope are just too different.

 

[brain_stew]

Just finished volume 1 and it comes highly recommended. There's an incredible amount of insight and candidness from some of the most important people on the project. Looking forward to getting stuck into volume 2.

 

[Dancrane212]

Just finished volume 1 and it comes highly recommended. There's an incredible amount of insight and candidness from some of the most important people on the project. Looking forward to getting stuck into volume 2.

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Got sidetracked with Monster Hunter but I just wrapped up reading the book last night and 100% agree. I was a bit apprehensive about making the thread without having read the whole book but the stuff in the latter half is just as good as the first. The bit about the early days of Xbox Live was a big highlight for me.

Ordered volume 2 and am looking forward to digging into it.