As readers of the INQ will recall, Microsoft lost a heap of money on the first version because it largely was a PC - and internal estimates suggested the firm feared it could lose $1 billion on its Sony challenge over an eight year period.

It transpires that the internal battle over the Xbox was fiercer than anyone expected - with Ballmer looking at the cold money facts, while Gates had one of his famous visions. Neverthless, it seems Microsoft was prepared to spend 20 years to get its way on the console front.

The book says that the Xbox was a "publicly unspoken attempt" to destroy Son's biggest profit source, but losses could amount to billions over the years.

There's some interesting vignettes. A suit at Electronic Arts reckoned the Playstation 1 needed 20 people to develop a game, 80 to develop one for the Playstation 2, and as many as 150 to develop for the Playstation 3 - and with the high costs no guarantee that the game could turn out to be a blockbuster.

The thought of Sony, in conjunction with Toshiba and IBM developing for the Playstation 3 gave a boost to Microsoft's plans to bring out the Xbox 360 quicker than Sony. The book relays the arguments Microsoft had with Nvidia's Mr Big Jen-Hsun Huang. The silicon design team for the Xbox 360 in Mountain View looked at other alternatives to the Nvidia, Intel merchant model.

That team talked to a heap of people including PMC-Sierra, Transmeta and Broadcom. And then ATI and its CEO Dave Orton. Microsoft had chats with Nvidia but relationships had soured with that firm.

The team had options to develop an Intel machine which would be "hot and fast", use a couple of processors including an Intel chip, or use an IBM Power PC chip.

This is an entertaining and in depth book by Dean Takahashi, who currently writes for the San Jose Mercury News. If you want to know the background on the console, and many interesting and entertaining anecdotes about the different players in the industry, this one's worth a read. µ