Nat Brown, uno dei fondatori del progetto Xbox, elenca tutte le ragioni che hanno fatto sì che Microsoft si lasciasse sfuggire una grossa occasione fallendo nel trasformare il prodotto in molto più che una console di videogiochi:
This was the point of xBox, that was why it was the Trojan horse for the living room, where we could land and be welcomed by millions of console customers with more hardware and better software and network connectivity than the non-console devices […] xBox was for years the only network-connected HD-ready device already attached to tv’s that had multi-use potential (games, DVD, Netflix) in the household to justify and amortize its high cost of purchase to the family’s bread-winners.
Per dare un’idea di come abbia fallito anche nell’attrarre e diventare una piattaforma per gli sviluppatori indipendenti: una membership all’App Store interno all’Xbox costa $10,000 l’anno.