Microsoft is notorious for being a very secretive and tight-knit company. Was it hard to get the people involved to tell the Xbox story? What were some of the specific roadblocks that you had to overcome to put this book together?

It was both easy and hard. I had credibility as a mainstream journalist. People on the team trusted me to get their story right, and they wanted their story told. Once some of them began to tell me their stories, they cleared the way for others to talk to me. That was like getting someone to trust you in the military or a cult. Once you're in, you're able to talk to them freely. But much of the talking had to be done unofficially and in secret. Naturally, the PR department didn't want to give me unfettered access. I asked to sit in on planning meetings and they declined to open up. I asked for meetings with top executives repeatedly and it took many, many months for it to happen. The standard answer was that the team was too busy to talk.

Fortunately, the low-level employees and the former employees helped me immensely, and they gave me things to ask the top executives. Once confronted with details, most executives answered questions honestly and openly. But, beyond an email interview and a brief chat at a reception, I never got to interview Bill Gates. I submitted questions to him but he didn't answer in the final stages of the book-writing process. However, Bill stated his opinions openly at many meetings and many public places, so I was able to depict his point of view. Of course, it was hard because much of the time everyone's memories of meetings were foggy and conflicted with each other. But I had to go back and ask people again and again for clarifications. That's why I'm confident that what I have described in the book is accurate.

What would you say is the most surprising thing you learned about Microsoft?

It's not a monolithic company with a single mission. It's more like an organic being, morphing constantly and changing with the political winds that favor certain individuals, technologies, or camps within the company. I found that the deeper you dug, the more you could learn about rivalries within Microsoft and the struggles that took place that the public never gets the see. Case in point: the Web TV battle with the Xbox team.

Was there any fallout between you and Microsoft after the book was published?

No. I continue to interview Xbox people, as arranged by the PR staff. They don't endorse the book and generally don't comment on the details in it. But they treat me like a journalist that they need to keep posted on all things Xbox. I did an extra chapter on Japan for a Japanese translation of the book, which launches in November, and they arranged interviews for that.

Give us your thoughts on the Xbox. What were some of the missteps that Microsoft has taken that have hurt the Xbox? Did Microsoft err in speeding up the development of the Xbox in order to compete more directly with the GameCube and the PS2?

Microsoft has been prudent about trying to contain the losses on the Xbox. But that, ironically, has been their biggest mistake at the outset. They priced the machine too high in Europe in order to save some money, but that really put them behind Nintendo in that market. In Japan, they didn't pay enough to get more exclusives. That has put them behind both Sony and Nintendo in another crucial market. They have long realized that they will lose billions of dollars in the video game market before they have a chance to make money. But now and then they make decisions that cause them to lose their resolve. They have been quick to learn. For instance, they cut the price to $199 in the U.S. in order to jump start sales, and they quickly cut prices in Europe. But every time they make an initial mistake, that costs them a loss in credibility.

As for erring in speeding up development, they didn't do that. In 1999, they faced a choice about whether to launch in 2000 or 2001. They opted for the 2001 option because that meant that Nvidia would have time to create a much better graphics chip to trump the PS2 graphics. That was a good decision in some respects. But they also doomed themselves to second or third place by launching so far behind Sony.

Because of the Xbox's near-PC architecture, it is the console that is most vulnerable to piracy and modification by users. How seriously do you think Microsoft is taking the problem of piracy and what are the methods that they will use to combat it?

This is correct in so far as people can develop hacks, like the MIT student did, to listen to unencrypted traffic on the MCP chip bus. But it is incorrect in some respects. Microsoft has centralized its online game service, making it closed in contrast to Sony's open approach. This has enabled them to vastly improve security in comparison to the PC. They can mandate that users have a single identity, making it easy to remove cheaters or other troublemakers from the online game service. They can download fixes or close vulnerabilities on the Xbox hard drives simultaneously through a single change to their servers, while Sony has no such ability. Microsoft is taking security issues very seriously, to the point where third-party publishers like Electronic Arts are complaining that it is asserting too much control.