Tina Summerford Why The Story Of Xbox Is So Compelling 20 Years Later

I recorded an interview with director Andrew Stephan for 2019, and am pleased to see it being published finally. I had seen the whole film preview and ended up being very good. I wrote two books about the origin of the game console and the Xbox 360. The Xbox 360 has since sold out in 2002 and 2005. That book was the first draft of history, as was a story about Red Rings of Death, or the defects in the Xbox 360. It was published in 2009 but it was the first of the first draft, which I published for the first time. Back then, it was so important that many of the sources that I’d rely on were unnamed. But he has clearly given this story, both by time and by the diligence of Stephan and the executive producer Tina Summerford. You have the highest levels of launching the game consoles, the Xbox in 2001, the Xbox 360 in 2005, the Xbox One in 2013 and the Xbox series X/S in 2020, and the highs of launching the Xbox 360 in 2020. Peter Moore and Todd Holmdahl talked about the pain of the failures and the documentary explains what really went wrong with millions of consoles broke down. Robbie Bach tells the story of a resignation letter that the head of the company, Steve Ballmer, slammed before the Xbox did first. We hear the stories of those who were there at the beginning, such as Seamus Blackley, Kevin Bachus, Ted Hase, Otto Berkes, Ed Fries and Nat Brown. But many who came after them included Phil Spencer. Blackley has claimed many times that the Xbox is never a guaranteed end. It didn’t mean it was easy to launch the console because Microsoft was a big company. That made it easier. The fact that I had just lost the most part, I highly recommend that you watch it. That’s a pretty dense story. And while it may seem long, the 20 years of it covering were so exciting and involved thousands of Microsoft employees and game developers. I talked with Summerford about how to make it. That story sparked the beginning of the Xbox year and covered the entire world. The show is currently being aired on Roku, IMDb TV, Redbox, YouTube, Microsoft Movies and more. Here is an edited transcript of our interview. Above: The original Xbox prototype will be shown in GDC 2000. Microsoft Image Credit: Microsoft. GamesBeat: What did you perform in power on? Tina Summerford: I was the producer of the documentary and then I’m the manager of programming at Microsoft. I would say I took the idea, revoked it internally and then went through execution. I hired the director of the production company. I was, and I did not say, the project owner. I also come in the series in the same vein as a little bit. I watched the whole thing. When I saw myself on camera, I became excited. Summerford: I was telling you all. First of all thanks for being part of that. He has been around a long time. You have a book that greatly helped us from the research perspective. As part of the process, the director has had a lot of effort in the area, so we were able to sit down and speak to us as a gift. I hope you were able to watch it. GamesBeat: Did you start all of the interviews back in 2019? Is it the E3 or more all that? Summerford was. We’re now in a pre-pandemic mode. You was a pre-pandemic. That was one of the earliest interviews I had ever been doing. The pandemic then exploded. It gave us a chance to breathe, by accident, but we stopped thinking about what to do next. I started my idea on the pitch deck in December of 2018. I pitched it on the site in February, so we started chatting about it about eight weeks later. It was fairly quick. GamesBeat: At the moment, I remember that was much more about the original Xbox and the anniversary coming. I thought it seemed quite strange that it appeared to be so much more important than that. This book covered the whole Xbox console history. Did you expand the scope of the program? Summerford: That’s perfectly right. In the first half of the time we thought of doing a 45 to 60 minute documentary. It was just the first pitch. But then the truth is that as we took the plunge and dive in, we had a bigger story than we thought we had. We learned so much. There was a lot of color, all that was coming in the light. We thought of connecting it to the 20th anniversary, but it wasn’t appropriate to stop. We’re looking forward to what the next 20 years where would we have stopped this? We did not want to stop at 360. Do you stop for the original? When we talked to people, people who had been here for many years, and began talking about the 360 and the One, he said to ourselves, Wow, the story isn’t going to get started. There’s a lot of richness and color. Then we decided, about halfway through the process, that we didn’t want to leave anything out. Fans were so generous. We just continued to wait till the start of Series X. This game has a sequel to the Xbox 360 in 2020. Image Credit: Microsoft. GamesBeat: It was interesting to see some people materialize who haven’t said so much before. This was perhaps the first time I saw Don Mattrick talk about this. Summerford: It was very happy to have Don participate, for sure. It was wonderful hearing her perspective. The people of the community, who say that some people, on the 15th of March, were curious whether Donwere had not included a lot of people in the trailer and it’s a huge surprise for fans. But we were happy Don participated. GamesBeat: How independent will it be? There is help from Microsoft, but there is alsoa thing who’s basically curating what you want to do here, can you? How do you navigate this part? Summerford: It was important to introduce a production company and documentary filmmakers so that we could get some information from the inside out and get better at what an authentic, truthful story would be like. They were doing the research, many of the Q&As, and constructing the story as it rolled down on the chair. We’re doing the right thing, do the right thing, you can’t imagine. My job with my team was to be in contact, to assist us, to obtain access, to help things like archives. It was a beautiful partnership, because we needed each other to reach the end result. It seems to be an excellent balance between both of us. If we would have done it internally, I would have gone where we went. It was critical to join a local neoliberal storyteller that had made an effort to dive deep and then push us off the comfort zone. That’s how the partnership worked with TEN100 and me. GamesBeat: Here’s a good place to be. I wonder how frank the conversations were. As far as time passes, the more people can say what they want, rather than to get them to the sand of their tongue when they are talking about unfortunate things. Summerford had the honour of time. What you saw unfold is the same thing that we saw unveiled as we was exploring. We had the gift of time, of twenty years from its origins. Your case is wrong. Most of those people have gone on, moved on, and were excited to relive that. There were a lot of colour, but also great stories. But there’s a gift of time. I think if we were to do a documentary just about the Series X, it would be hard to do that now. He needs a lot of time to read this and discover how it affects himself. Time needs to be moved on so that people may still feel more comfortable talking about it. Over: Bungies Halo has been successful in the original Xbox. Microsoft image credits are accredited by the company. GamesBeat: It was awesome seeing some things covered, such as the whole clip about TV, TV or TV. And then Don Mattricks was there again. Different people are saying that it’s all that I have, was all the same. Look at the Xbox One, it seems that they have gone back to the past and realized what it looked like, what the optics look like. Summerford – Is that right? Hanch is 20/20. I say, as soon as we went back andas a person who was part of that time-thirty, the fact that people were there and responsible for that moment, like many others that are still hereyeah, its hard to get back and go back. However, you know it is the story. It’s what is going on. You have to do it! We didn’t want to see it. We must learn about him. We couldn’t leave it if we wanted to tell an authentic story. We leaned in and talked about it and discussed the lesson we learned. Doing that was healthy for many of us in the house. In some ways it was pause at that moment. But yeah, it is still not important to watch and learn that we let down gamers at that time. I don’t know when that’ll go away. Neverpeople spend their money and time and they love it. It hurts when you stop the noise. It’s emotional for many. It is hard to see the fact that a lot of people watch the series were here right now. Above: Robbie Bach is a former chief of the Xbox. The image is E3. GamesBeat: I still feel that people are excessively critical about that. Maybe just the clarity of saying, We will talk about what you need at the time, and then tell you about games at E3. People didn’t seem to understand that. They just said, Where are the games? The optics is like me. It became a story, that there weren’t any games for this thing. Summerford: It was much earlier than that. It wasn’t that the wrongit certainly was the wrong rollout. That was the biggest lesson learned. I think you’re right about that. We learned, despite the fact that it’s difficult to take something back when it’s on. Being able to tell people, Hold on, please come at E3, so was not really acceptable. By virtue of their passion for the Internet and community, they let us know. I don’t think that it’s the perfect plan. But we also learned that that was the moment we learned the most about the passion of the community. It was not a hardware question. It was their appetite for something that we didn’t deliver yet. We learned a lot about marketing and rolling out. They have taught us that. Something we do, please. GamesBeat: The Red Ring of Death section was a very good one, too. From what I remember reading about it in 2009, I had to use a lot of unnamed sources to extract some of the information. The percentage of machines that were coming out of line broke (at some point, 68% of machines coming out of line failed). There was a bunch of stuff in the bone-pocket warehouse. That puts in perspective the magnitude of the problem. When nobody was ready to talk about that stuff, it wasn’t until now. But then to see people like Peter Moore and everyone else there talking about those things, and to the actual cause of it, all of that seemed real-breaking to me. In the present moment, they realized they could talk more about. That seemed like a really good information. Todd Holmdahl said that four out of 10 machines were bad. Summerford: Again its that gift of time with that one. First time you heard the different ways around the business coming together and saying: Heres what actually happened. I noticed that the section was so interesting. Would it be so nice being on the chair and hearing what someone said to be a bit in the background of a woman who came from G4 at the time and covered a large part of the Red Ring? I just came across G4 before returning. So I had great anticipation for the 360, and then it was an extension of the trip and saw what happened. That was a great experience. This is one of the things people will gravitate toward. That’s a solution to something that nobody has actually really had before. Almost everyone, even inside, that watched it say, I didn’t know that’s what caused it, and all of those things happened. Peter went to Steve, and that Toddyou could only see Todds face, see him back to these moments and how hard that was. There were tears in the chairs in the moment, because this was an emotional part of peoples conversations directly involved in that. Above: Red dead rings. GamesBeat: Did you think you were going to the bottom of that, as far as I would like to clarify the history? Summerford: I don’t know whether onion is an excellent example, but you can probably do something in a documentary, and go through the layers a bit deeper. I think that this story was so deep. But who knows that? Maybe there’s a follow-up. I wish you knew. But I think this docuseries is full of depth. GamesBeat: Do you look at both of these things as such a way do they fit into the narrative of twenty years? Summerford: I think the interpretation is the acknowledgment of the moments and the lessons that are learned from that moment. And without those moments I don’t know that we’ll be where we are today. Without a doubt, would we not learn what those moments taught us? She is a person. For 20 years as long as you innovate enough, it’ll be too risky. If every chance comes to an end, youre probably won’t have enough knowledge in the future. In my opinion, true innovation is without risk. Is today on meetings where we refer back to the lessons learned from Red Ring, from the Xbox One launch, and say, Do you remember when we did that? Let’s not have another. We’re talking about that. They’re part of our story. This is what we are. If we didn’t take control, then we wouldn’t be able to figure it out. And so we do, 100 %, internally, we assume accountability and we remember very vividly. It helps us work up. GamesBeat: I still think some people can’t get credit easily. Folks like Bill Gates or Steve Ballmer who were willing to lose $4 billion to get to where we’re today, with billions in revenue per quarter. Summerford: As you see in the series, they played an important role in the creation and early years. This is the story, right? They would approve and back it, and put the money back. They have the right role, and I think they should progress. Peter Moore – above, Microsoft Credit. GamesBeat: Are there certain things you pull out of the series, taking a look back at? Summerford: I don’t know what that sounds like, but I’ll say I have never been more proud to work for this company as I have been when I was lucky enough to go for a visit to this museum. For all the interesting, storytime, I conceived a journey of 20 years. Passion, people. You needed this group of personalities in the idea of what they all came together. I realized myself how difficult a trip to Microsoft was to do that. Your appreciation for the spirit of the business, people willing to go do that, made me feel more pride for the company as I learned the stories and learned about the role and the risks of the early leaders. That made it a little easier for me to understand how we got to where we were today. A person recognizes innovation and the vision they have. You need the people behind this technology. Above: The original Xbox One. I am a copyright: GamesBeat. GamesBeat: Did anybody see any interesting feedback that you’ve heard from all of the people involved so far? Summerford: Very few people have seen him. There’s a cast out. Tomorrow will be the first time most people will see it. Many people witnessed this when we did feedback and fact-checking early. For now the company is excited to announce this coming out on Monday. Chris Capossela, our marketing consultant, is so excited about that. There has been many support for innovation over the storytelling and how were being shown authentically. We feel like we have made it for the fans. We were all excited to find it inside our hands. People can go back in memory and smile and perhaps feel some pain with us sometimes too. GamesBeat: It reminds me a little of the original Xbox programming of the E.T. game, and the video game crashes. That was the best, I thought. There’s a smaller story, but still. Summerford: The genesis of that really is the key. We know that the consumer wants and wants. Sometimes it’s hard to find. You feel a risk you take. That’s what he is. We knew we wanted to tell a real story. I proud of the story that were telling here, and that allowed the story to be told. Pride gets there. I think fans will be excited to watch them. GamesBeat: It’s probably good time to come out after the Halo launch. It gets very beautiful. Summerford: We certainly want people playing Halo right now! We want nothing to make a point in playing Halo. It was a really fun week. Above: Seamus Blackley with his Feynman Van. Image Credit: Seamus Blackley GamesBeat: Can you remind me in which manner this is seen?