Guest Essay from X-Box Co-Creator, Kevin Bachus

Over on Mercury News, there’s a guest essay by Kevin Bachus, one of the co-creators of the original X-Box. In it, he reflects back on the challenges his team faced in even getting the X-Box produced and to market. Apparently not those within Microsoft believed the new system could take on Nintendo and Sony. He also states that the original idea — which he admits to be way too optimistic — was to release a new system every two years.

He mentions a lot of the accomplishments of the system and attributes it to a loyal fan base, which I agree with. However he fails to mention that a lot of this fan base would have never existed without one pivotal game: Halo. I still remember seriously my disappointment when I found out Halo was going to be coming out exclusively to the X-Box and not the PC, as originally intended. That bit of news almost pushed me into buying the new system. Almost.

Kevin later went on to become president and COO of Infinium Labs, where he oversaw the development of the Phantom. Yeah…maybe not the greatest career choice, since the Phantom will probably never see the light of day. He now works for Nival Studios.