Hvornår begyndte de første konsolkrige? Der findes ikke noget endegyldigt svar på det spørgsmål, men det er rimeligt at antage, at det skete omtrent samtidig med, at der var mere end én konsol at vælge imellem, hvor nogle spillere gik urimeligt langt for at få folk til at vælge det format, de selv havde investeret i. Siden da er det næsten blevet som at heppe på et fodboldhold, selvom der er meget lille forskel mellem PlayStation 5 og Xbox Series X med hensyn til ydeevne, pris og spiludvalg.
Uanset hvad, så kommenterer den tidligere Sega- og Xbox-chef Peter Moore nu sagen i et interview med The Game Business, og han mener, at han har været en af dem, der har bidraget mest til den ofte ret ophedede stemning mellem gamere. Han nævner specifikt sin tid hos Sega, et firma der ofte kørte hårdtslående kampagner rettet mod konkurrenterne (hvem kan for eksempel glemme "Sega does what Nintendon't" under 16-bit æraen?). Da Sony havde problemer med at levere PlayStation 2-enheder, var Sega i gang igen, og det var Moore, der trak i trådene (transskriberet af 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 siger også, at han ønskede at bygge en Xbox, der ikke ledte tankerne over på Microsoft, Windows, Office-pakken og så videre. Bill Gates forstod dette og godkendte beslutningen, hvilket førte til, at Xbox stod på egne ben:
"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."
I 2007 forlod Peter Moore Xbox og har siden prøvet kræfter med alt fra at være leder af EA Sports til Liverpool FC. Men han har aldrig helt givet slip på Xbox og nyder at tale om, da han var involveret i at skabe Xbox 360 og deltage i hyldestevents og lignende begivenheder. Vi forventer at se mere til ham, når Xbox fylder 25 senere på efteråret.
<social>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CEa4Ve9bys</social>