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Comment by ChrisKnott | Hacker News Reader

The legacy of the Dreamcast was the Xbox, specifically online multiplayer (and massive controllers!).

Peter Moore (who worked on both consoles) has talked about this several times over the years, e.g. this recent example [0]

[0] from 7:40 https://youtu.be/tadtqchbbh0&t=460

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Thanks for the link. Microsoft really built XBox out of everything they learned from working with Sega on Dreamcast. Without Dreamcast there would be no XBox.

Funny that, just like how Nintendo created the PlayStation through their dealings with Sony.

I remember going into someone’s office at microsoft after I first joined (back when everyone there had an office- it’s all open office now) and seeing a Dreamcast on someone’s shelf and being really confused. He explained he did most of the DirectX port for it and told me some of the details about working in it. It was a fascinating look into what might have been.

Microsoft went open plan?! I've not been on the campus in years. I always loved the little offices with everyone's past projects on the shelves.

Next you'll be telling me they got rid of all those free snacks and drinks.

I think MS went open plan starting in '07 with the "The Commons" campus. Some parts like Bungie were open plan much earlier. (The Bungie team demanded it, they felt it improved collaboration.)

But before that, regular MS engineers were often "temporarily" doubled up or tripled up in their offices, so going open plan wasn't as much of a difference as it might have been.

In the old days people's computers and monitors were physically much larger, you needed multiple computers to multi-task, and you needed lots of paper documentation. One reason we're open-plan now is that people can be very productive with a chair, laptop, and 24" monitor.

> "Microsoft really built XBox out of everything they learned from working with Sega on Dreamcast."

People say this but I don't think it's really true or, if it is, it certainly wasn't apparent from the worm's eye view. As the Dreamcast was dying off, there were actually two rival console proposals within MS; one was from the Windows division (whatever it was called then) that became the Xbox and the other came from the Dreamcast team and was IIRC MIPS-based and, of course, ran Windows CE. (And we all know which one won.) Nor did it seem that the Xbox project had any particular interest in taking on ex-Dreamcast staff; of all the IC developers on the project, only one person successfully moved from the Dreamcast team to the Xbox team to the best of my recollection. (Remember that this era was the old Gates-led, cutthroat Microsoft where the internal competitiveness was just as high as external competitiveness. The Windows division and its leadership anecdotally was not happy about the existence of Windows CE.)

It remains a mystery to me to this day what expertise was supposedly transferred from the Dreamcast project to the Xbox project. Personally, I suspect it's a myth and the anecdotes by former executives are papering a happy face over a complicated history but, meh, what do I know?

There was a third team from WebTV, that was based around the team that designed the 3DO M2.

That team lost the original Xbox internal design contest, but went on to design the 360 and later Xbox consoles.

The Dreamcast WinCE project did contribute several engineers to the Xbox org. It mostly taught MS how the console game business worked, showed them where WinCE/Direct X needed to be improved to support consoles, and gave them a list of things not to do.

Dreamcast’s controller and accessories were also quite influential on the original Xbox controller.

Microsoft's involvement in the Dreamcast was only in the Windows CE library for game development and nothing else

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