1. Innovation. This is always a topic for business stories. The book does an excellent job on describing the (almost) day to day activities that an internal, subversive group within Microsoft that hatched the idea for a game console.
2. Corporate culture. Microsoft has been accused of having a insular culture that prohibits risk-taking activities. I think in the Windows Operating System group this might be true. But Microsoft's game console strategy was one of new entrant. Sony, Sega, and Nintendo were the heavyweights. It was interesting to read how Microsoft approached the market by listening to game developers and gamers needs. They outlined a strategy that highlighted several competitive elements that the other, more entrench firms ignored.
3. Overview of Game Culture. The author is a well-known journalist that has been covering the game industry for years. There are some great insights on the industry's perks and unique charactistics. The Japanese game culture is much more highly developed vs. the American. The demographics are very selected in the US -- 18 to 26 males. Microsoft, as part of its initial console strategy, aimed to enlarge this demographic to include woman and older men.
Yet I have several misgivings about this book.
1. There aren't any reproduced internal memos, white papers, or notes that made up the effort to create the console. We are only shown photos of Microsoft employees. It would have been nice to see actual artifacts.
2. The reading sometimes is too easy. The author, of course, is a journalist. It is by far an unscholarly text.
The book is the usual business profile project creation book. It has the obligatory references to The Soul of a New Machine and lots of resume-like bios of the main characters involved in the Xbox saga. However, the book is well written and does have a number of insights into how capable the people are at MS, how well and with what determination they look at both the business case and the technology they can build.
The book also has a lot of interesting anecdotes about how the web tv project and the Xbox interacted and about Microsofts possible purchases of other games companies.
The one area where the book could be better is by including more discussion about the Xbox's actual technology, but this would have required a more technical writer and would be for a much more limited audience.
All in all, a well recommended good read.
An interesting look at how projects evolve inside a company like Microsoft and how that evolution effects subsequent strategy. It makes an interesting point of comparison for similar projects in other companies.
A good look at how Microsoft is responding to the question of games and the gaming industry.
What the book is not:
Particularly well-written, at least in my opinion. The writing felt clunky, too much like an extended magazine article and not enough like a book.
Well documented. I expected more than interviews and anecdotal evidence.