When did the first console wars begin? There is no definitive answer to that question, but it's reasonable to assume that it happened around the same time that there was more than one console to choose from, with some players going to unreasonable lengths to get people to choose the format they themselves had invested in. Since then, it has become almost like cheering for a football team, even though there is very little difference between the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X in terms of performance, price, and game selection.
Be that as it may, former Sega and Xbox boss Peter Moore now comments on the matter in an interview with The Game Business, and he believes he has been one of the people who has contributed most to the often quite heated tone between gamers. He specifically mentions his time at Sega, a company that often ran hard-hitting campaigns targeting its competitors (who can forget "Sega does what Nintendon't" during the 16-bit era, for example). When Sony had problems delivering PlayStation 2 units, Sega was at it again, and it was Moore who pulled the strings (transcribed by Windows Central):
"It was nerdy, right? It was [Bill Gates]! It was [Steve Ballmer]! If you watched the video, it was 'Developers! Developers!' This is nerd central there, and I move up there and I have lunch with Steve Ballmer, and he says, 'We don't have people like you'. He had seen me on stage for Sega kinda throwing punches; I loved being a challenger of brands and giving Sony all kinds of abuse, irreverent abuse. One of my best print ads was a little redheaded ginger kid going like this [taunting gesture], and 'Sega wishes Sony all the best with their hardware shortages.' I mean, we were just mocking each other all the time. This is how the console wars started."
Moore also says that he wanted to build Xbox into something that didn't bring to mind Microsoft, Windows, the Office suite, and so on. Bill Gates understood this and approved the decision, which led to Xbox standing on its own two feet:
"In a key meeting with Bill, I said, 'Look, you're going to see the Xbox 360 packaging. You're not going to see Microsoft anywhere near. We're going to create a brand that is Xbox. Now, people will know that it's owned by Microsoft, but we need to segment ourselves away from Excel, PowerPoint, Windows, NT Server — it needs to be different. And Bill, to his credit, said 'Absolutely.' ... And so we created an Xbox brand, a lot happened to it in those succeeding years, but it sits today as one of the top 100 brands in the world. And I'm very proud our team was able to do that in those early days."
In 2007, Peter Moore left Xbox and has since tried his hand at everything from being head of EA Sports to the Liverpool football club. But he has never completely let go of Xbox and enjoys talking about when he was involved in creating Xbox 360 and participating in tribute events and other such occasions. We expect to see more of him when Xbox turns 25 later this autumn.
<social>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CEa4Ve9bys</social>