We always love hearing from the legend that is Seamus Blackley, and the original Xbox co-creator has been speaking to the LegendsNLeaders YouTube channel this week, where he's been discussing the launch of the OG console.
There's a lot to dig into in the show itself, but we wanted to highlight a bit that we found particularly interesting - and it's a story about Xbox's first ever Tokyo Game Show appearance. Blackley recalls this in detail in the podcast, setting the scene as being a stressful one, and explaining how trying to arrange an Xbox booth at the show proved extremely difficult and required a lot of hard work. By the time they arrived in Japan, it had been a tough few days / weeks.
However, there was an emotional moment that brought him to tears (in a good way), as transcribed below:
"We got to the station at Odaiba, and this was before the launch of the Xbox. It's been this project that we've just sort of got running with sheer gumption, and we've quit our jobs, and we thought we were going to be fired - I used to drive home crying because it was so stressful."
"We get out of the train, and somebody had papered the entire train station in Xbox logos. Like, the Japan team had done this. And I lost it, I collapsed, I fell down on my knees and I was crying because I couldn't believe [it]. This idea we had [building a games console], it was just us talking about it, and now here it is in Japan at the games conference and the logo was everywhere. And it was the most extraordinary feeling. Is this real? Is this going to happen now? Wow! Wow!"
Blackley makes it clear that building the original Xbox behind the scenes was not an easy process at all, so obviously there was a lot of relief when it finally took off. He tells the story better than we do, so it's worth listening to it in full!
Without the hard work of Blackley and his team almost 25 years ago, we almost certainly wouldn't be here celebrating the Xbox in 2024, so if you're reading this Seamus - thank you for everything you did to make this brand a reality!