It’s probably a pretty rare thing for an employee to get away with blatantly lying to their boss’s face, especially when it comes to the allocation of money. It’s probably even rarer for the lies to spawn a beneficial product, but that’s precisely what happened when Seamus Blackley repeatedly lied to Microsoft. The former director of the “X-Box Advanced Technology Team” wanted to get the Xbox console developed, and he told whatever lies he needed to make it happen.
Speaking with Edge Game Changers, Seamus Blackley stated that he had to trick Bill Gates into creating the original Xbox. Microsoft didn’t want to place a bet on the console because of how strong of a hold Sony had on the gaming market with its PlayStation. But through a series of persuasive lies that Blackley refers to as “Jedi mind tricks,” he managed to convince Bill Gates and the rest of Microsoft to get on board with and through the Xbox’s creation.
According to Blackley, his co-workers didn’t understand much about gaming, and as a result, would pitch ideas that didn’t make sense for the Xbox to have. However, Blackley believed that given time, his colleagues would better understand the market, and so he went along with their ideas, knowing full well they would never make it to the final product. For instance, he blatantly lied to Bill Gates about incorporating Microsoft’s Windows operating system into the Xbox.
Blackley ended up being right. As the development of the Xbox progressed, Blackley’s co-workers gained an understanding of what gamers wanted and abandoned the ideas that they originally thought would be good for the console. It eventually got to the point where most of them believed that it was their idea to abandon things like Windows in the first place — not Blackley’s, who had told them it was unnecessary from the very beginning. Hence why he calls the series of lies “Jedi mind tricks.”
It’s somewhat hilarious how Blackley got away with bald-faced lies in the face of superiors. There’s certainly a generation of gamers who are more than thankful for his underhanded tactics, though, as they allowed them to experience all of the great moments they’ve had with Xbox so far. The console certainly ended up being a success. It’s been years since Blackley’s deceptions, and the Xbox is entering its fourth iteration in the form of the Xbox Series, which will release soon on November 10, 2020.
Source: GamesRadar
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