This September is the 10th anniversary of DirectX. Myself and two friends, Craig Eisler and Eric Engstrom, conceived the notion that Microsoft should create a game SDK for the forthcoming Windows 95 OS. We wrote a document called “Taking Fun Seriously,” proposing our strategy for making the Windows OS a leading game platform. The proposal was politely rejected, so naturally we did it anyway with resources we begged, borrowed, or stole from other groups. We originally conceived of DirectX as a stealth strategy to help PCs dominate the living room and displace ubiquitous consoles from Sony, Sega, and Nintendo. Naturally the project was code-named “The Manhattan Project,” and we chose the radiation symbol as our logo. In early December 1994, a handful of the PC game industries’ leading developers convened at Microsoft campus to participate in the design review for what would become DirectX 1.0. Attending developers were issued glow-in-the-dark, neon “Manhattan Project” T-shirts.

We had a beta release of the technology in time for the March 1995 Game Developers Conference. The conference refused to allow Microsoft to announce the technology there, so I ended up renting the Great America Theme Park across the street from the event and threw a wild party called Ground Zero, which was attended by more than 1,500 developers. DirectX 1.0 included DirectDraw for 2D graphics; DirectSound, which was prototyped for us by game industry legend John Miles; DirectInput for joysticks and game-pads; and AutoPlay.

For DirectX 3.0 we acquired UK-based RenderMorphics to create Direct3D, after Microsoft internal politics prevented us from porting OpenGL from Windows NT to Windows 95 to enable consumer 3D graphics for consumers. The now infamous DirectX radiation symbol had been morphed into an “X” with a neon background, for the sake of political correctness. By 2000, all three of us had left Microsoft for greener pastures, but the DirectX legacy remained. After a failed attempt to work with Sega to create a DirectX-based OS for the Sega Dreamcast, Microsoft decided to make its own game console, the “DirectXbox.” (Read “Opening the Xbox” by Dean Takahashi.) A little marketing refinement left only the name “Xbox,” with the radioactive neon X on its cover and eerie neon UI.

Ten years after the start of the “Manhattan Project,” Microsoft is poised to drop its next-generation game console on the world, and I have to wonder if anybody at Sony and Nintendo is getting that sinking feeling that Netscape must have experienced when it woke up one day undeniably confronted by the possibility that Microsoft had come from behind with a better browser and a better strategy and snatched the rug out from under it. When Microsoft named the Xbox360, I suspect it meant “Xbox Full Circle,” as in, this product is the conclusion to a 10-year plan for Microsoft to dominate the living room via games.

When first I heard from former colleagues at Microsoft about the plans to launch a DirectX console, I have to admit that I was highly skeptical that Microsoft could pull off such an ambitious effort. The media like to point out that the Xbox couldn’t beat the Sony PS2, but nobody mentions what a near miraculous feat it was for Microsoft to beat Nintendo and place second against the deeply entrenched PS2. For its first try, Microsoft punched a hell of a hole in the console business. Microsoft has a long history of learning fast from its mistakes and it had plenty of time to learn from Xbox-1 (which I’ll talk more about in a future column).

This time around, Microsoft is taking the lead in the market by launching first, declaring the battlefield to be all about online gaming support (in which it has a dominating lead), and working hard to attract leading console game publishers instead of trying to compete with all of them from Microsoft Game Studios. It’s a powerful strategy and a worthy 10th anniversary present for DirectX. (The logos—a coincidence? I think not.).

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