I often think about what would have happened if Microsoft didn’t release the Xbox and instead just went the Valve route and built a PC for the living room.

We get an inkling of that with NBA Inside Drive 2000.

Released in 1999, this was Microsoft’s answer to NBA 2K and NBA Live. It was released exclusively on Windows. And it had great reviews too.

For the time, it was quite impressive. For example, you could see reflections on the court floors—which consoles of the time couldn’t do. It also featured a TV broadcast-like perspective that made it look like you were watching the game live. And the play-by-play announcing was accurate to the action happening on screen—with colour commenting too.

What’s interesting about this game is that, in addition to keyboard and mouse support, Inside Drive was playable with a digital joystick—important to note because most PC joysticks were analog.

Now why do I bring this up? Because turns out, this is the only version of Inside Drive that was made for PC. The next three versions (2002, 2003, and 2004) were Xbox exclusives. It’s likely that Microsoft initially planned on this to be an ongoing series for PCs, but when it was decided Xbox was happening—no more PC releases for Inside Drive.

A couple years ago, I watched a documentary series on the making of the original Xbox—made by Microsoft themselves—and there was a fight within Microsoft about how to compete with PlayStation. One faction wanted to make a living room version of Windows. This was what Bill Gates wanted. The other faction felt strongly that a dedicated console should be made. The view won out.

What’s further interesting to me is that one of the original people to push Microsoft into gaming was none other than Gabe Newell. Yes, prior to making Half-Life, he worked at Microsoft. While working at Xbox, he noticed that one piece of software managed to beat Windows when it came to distribution. That software was Doom.

He noticed that while Microsoft employed thousands of people, only five people worked on Doom. Noticing the power of gaming to build platforms, Gabe Newell went to work on porting Doom to Windows using DirectX—and this established Windows 95 as a gaming platform.

While not based on Windows, the Xbox is nevertheless based on DirectX. In fact Xbox is short for DirectXBox.

However, Gabe Newell did not like Xbox. He felt the openness of the PC ecosystem was the platform’s superpower, and believed gamers should install any software they like on their preferred hardware. And he further felt that Xbox Live was a train wreck.

Why do I bring this up? Because while I personally enjoy Xbox, there’s no doubt that we wouldn’t have had Steam if not for it. It wasn’t Windows that Gabe Newell didn’t like. After all, he helped popularize it. It was the locked down nature of consoles. The Windows Store on Windows 8 was simply his last straw—the impetus for developing SteamOS.

But if Microsoft didn’t go that route with Xbox, continued publishing console-like games such as NBA Inside Drive for Windows, history would have been very different. It’s possible that everyone would be using Windows on their TVs by now.

@atomicpoet@atomicpoet.org "He felt the openness of the PC ecosystem was the platform's superpower" Right, that's why if I want to buy a PC game these days, my purchasing options are often restricted to Steam, or code for Steam.

I near exclusively play pirated PC games now because of Gabe.

@atomicpoet@atomicpoet.org I've done a deep browse on GoG. There's a lot of garbage, old games I've already played, etc. Any time I see a game announcement that interests me, it's nearly always only on Steam.

I've spoken with developers of a game I wanted and they said they said GoG doesn't offer matchmaking servers, so maybe that's an area where GoG needs to improve to keep up with the needs of devs.

@atomicpoet@atomicpoet.org Personally I'm happy using OBS for recording and Mango Game HUD. What Steam offers isn't particularly revolutionary.

狐ヴィクシー Okay, but you already told me you don’t use GOG because Steam offers something that it does not—even though GOG has no DRM.

And this is true across the board. Sure, someone could use EGS with OBS, Mango HUD, Twitter, Discord, etc. But Steam already offers everything in one package.

You may have no problem using multiple packages to achieve feature parity with Steam. But you’re also a nerd who has no problem configuring software packages so they’re customized to your taste.

@atomicpoet@atomicpoet.org I use GoG, but it's missing features game devs want so it doesn't get many games.