Microsoft : New docuseries explores the origins of Xbox and its evolution over 20 years

"One of the things that's going to surprise people about the series is its candor. One of the essential conversations I had with Tina going into this was that if we're going to do this, we've got to be honest and self-critical to a fault. Otherwise, no one's going to care," Stephan says. "No one wants to hear what you think your achievements are. They want to hear about your missteps, and they want to hear about your vulnerabilities, which is something that everyone can relate to. And when they hear that, then I think they'll be more accepting of the really good things that you've done."

For Stephan, the "Power On" part of the title is a double entendre.

"This is a brand that has succeeded by sheer perseverance - many times - in spite of itself, learning from its missteps, always, with an eye to create," he says. "I learned that, at Xbox, it really is a group of passionate gamers behind the brand who aren't just reporting to a job. This isn't just a gig for most of them…it's something they truly love."

Shannon Loftis is one of those people you'll see in the docuseries. She runs the game studio that produces Age of Empires - one of Microsoft's oldest game franchises, initially launching on PC and now available on the Xbox, spanning almost 25 years.

"I'm meeting people now who chose history as their career because they played Age of Empires and loved it and now, they want to play Age with their kids. I never thought it would be a generational thing, but that is where we are," says Loftis, for whom arcades felt like home, with their "bad carpet, funky lighting and super noisy background." When her parents took the family to the beach, she and her brother would find the local arcade and spend as much time there as they could. At her part-time job working at a movie theater, she'd play games in the lobby during her breaks.

"I think people underestimate how hard it is for even an incredibly well-resourced company like Microsoft to commit the investment, the patience and the capital that it requires to get into a whole new industry, especially an industry that evolves as fast as video gaming," she says.

Loftis began her career at Microsoft as a game producer in the early '90s. Her first job in games (pre-Xbox) was trying to create a database-based way to play card games on the PC. But she soon joined the team that would create the first Xbox console. And this would be a very different environment from the rest of the company.

"It was important for games to break away from mainland Microsoft," she says. "We recognized that if we were going to succeed with the Xbox, we needed to have a pop culture mentality and not a productivity mentality. It was interesting to take a walk around the offices of Xbox because you would just see so much stuff on the walls. It was totally cool to be playing a game in the middle of the day and all of this just felt very different from traditional Microsoft."

Just like the rest of the company in the late '90s, women were scarcer in this group, but they were there. And throughout the series, you'll hear their stories too.

"There have been strong women present in the gaming organization throughout the existence of Xbox. I've always had role models in the industry," says Loftis, who co-founded the Women in Games group more than 20 years ago as a safe and supportive space to network. "As male dominated as it was - and it was certainly male dominated - it's never been exclusively male."

Loftis has gone through her share of ups and downs in Xbox, including the Red Ring of Death. But its aftermath - where Microsoft agreed to fix the problem at no cost to Xbox owners through a warranty extension - delivered to Loftis one of her proudest moments at the company.

"It was absolutely a make-or-break moment. It was a do what's right for the customer moment and at a great expense to the company," she says. "And I think if we hadn't reacted that way, we wouldn't be in the business now."

And that business went in directions she hadn't anticipated in those early days.

"What I never could have envisioned was that the word Xbox doesn't mean console anymore. It means so much more: gaming, social gaming, Game Pass. It means the communities that you can build around the content that is created and run for Xbox and for PC. I never imagined it would be so big a part of popular culture," says Loftis, who also went through another crisis with the less than enthusiastic reception gamers gave the Xbox One console.

Based on learnings from the Xbox One console release, the organization went through another course correction that would eventually lead to Xbox Series X|S consoles.

"I think that was something that brought everybody back to center and helped us all to like, heal and regenerate the enthusiasm and the passion," she says.

Much of the series focuses on the early days of the original Xbox console and the Xbox 360. There's less focus on today's Xbox since that story is still being shaped - but the series does show how this rogue group transformed over the years into so much more.

"In addition to the business struggling and growing, the culture surrounding the business struggled and grew, and the reason why we were able to be what we are today is because there are people with strong values around inclusivity, creativity and great worldbuilding both here in the real world, as well as in the games and the content," Loftis says. "Without that kind of leadership growth, we would never have survived and thrived as much as we have, and that's something that isn't part of the storyline of the series, but it is certainly why I'm still here."

Lead image: an original illustration from "Power On: The Story of Xbox" showing the team that created the original Xbox at work