In 2001, Seamus Blackley, one of the main creators behind the original Xbox console, compared gaming to masturbating. Apparently, that didn’t sit well with Bill Gates and other senior Microsoft executives. According to Blackley, he was nearly fired for the quote.
Recently Someone pointed this out on Twitter Quote from Bloomberg Journalist Dina Bass which read: “Playing is like masturbating. Everyone does it, no one wants to talk about it.” She responded to the person on Twitter, explaining that she had to give her credit Seamus Blackey, often called the father of Xbox, who said this quote way back in 2001. In response to this tweet, Blackley stated that he almost got fired for that quote.
In 2001, Blackley gave an interview a few weeks before the Xbox was launched. And in the interview he said the infamous quote: “Playing is like masturbating. Everyone does it, nobody wants to talk about it.”
Blackley explained that the main reason he got in so much trouble was because the quote ended up in the East Side Journal. ‘ And some conservative spouses of [Microsoft] Executives read it,” Blackley said, “and I was summoned to, say, Building 4.”
As discovered by game spot, this isn’t the first time Blackley has joked about the infamous quote. 2019, he explained why he said it.
“It was an argument for multiplayer [gaming] Online, which Xbox was a pioneer in,” Blac saidtacky. However, the context didn’t matter. Seemingly, Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer were “VERY upset” by the quote.
Of course blackthatShe wasn’t fired and helped out Microsoft successfully launches the original Xbox and while that initial Console not nearly as good as the PS2, later Xbox consoles were far more successful. Now, Microsoft’s Xbox division is so big that their Buy Activision and Bethesda-sized company to feed his hugely popular Netflix-like service, game pass.
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