Gates asked Idei to base the PlayStation 2 on Windows, and the Sony president-who is not short on self-esteem-flatly refused. According to Takahashi's account, Gates flew into a rage-not a cool thing to do when you've been spurned. Idei later fanned the flames by telling The New Yorker magazine that Microsoft's idea of an open software architecture was a Microsoft architecture.

So when the idea bubbled up at Microsoft to create a game console, Gates gave the project the go-ahead, putting Microsoft into competition with Sony. Had Idei been a bit more old-style Japanese (perhaps he took too much to heart Akio Morita's book, The Japan That Can Say No) and told Gates he would just think about it, perhaps the Xbox would not be around today.

But competition is good, and Microsoft is giving to Sony what Sony gave to Nintendo: more competition. The newly marked-down $199 Playstation 2 prices would be more like $399 if the game console market was still being divided between Sony and Nintendo.

Takahashi tries to turn Seamus Blackely, one of the early members of the Xbox team, into a game culture hero who survived the Microsoft corporate culture, but we don't come to care very deeply about Seamus in this book.

That said, the real value of Takahashi's book is to present the Microsoft decision-making process-and fleshing out the people on the Xbox team is part of that value proposition.

Opening the Xbox also provides a wonderful subplot about Nvidia's role. Game developers pushed Microsoft to design in Nvidia's GeForce graphics chip, but Nvidia initially bid a high per-chip price. How the final deal was struck is fascinating reading.

The book also looks behind the scenes at marketing. Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo competed to have the best parties and coolest demos-peeks of new games-at the E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo) and other gamer get-togethers.

It's great that Microsoft is willing to lose money for a few years and provide competition to the game console industry. If we could have a similar level of capitalistic vitality in personal computer software, we'd be further ahead.

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