The short story is that this guy named Tom Quinn had a company called Gyration that did motion control stuff. He pitched it to both Microsoft and Sony personally, and apparently got shot down by both... hard. Nintendo bought a stake in his company, used the tech on the Wii, and the rest is history. from Computerandvideogames.comMicrosoft: "Through my business connections, the first games person I got in touch with was Steve Ballmer," he says.
"I pitched this motion control device to him and he loved it. He set me up with the Xbox team in Redmond [Washington] for a second pitch and I remember how incredibly excited I was about it. Things were happening so fast.
"But the meeting went terribly. The attitude I got from them was that if they wanted to do motion control, they would do it themselves and make a better job of it. I mean, they were just rude. In fact, the meeting went so terribly that one of the executives came over to me afterwards and apologised on behalf of others. I remember him saying how this was not how Microsoft should be engaging with potential partners."Sony: "I'll never forget that meeting at Sony," Quinn says. "We were in a tiny little room with a big PC projector and Kutaragi comes in, introduces himself, sits down and - I swear this is true - he closed his eyes the moment I started showing my pitch. He never opened them until I had finished.
"It was awkward, very awkward, but I still asked him for feedback and he said, 'well, can you produce this for 50 cents?' I laughed and explained that would be impossible, so again I left empty handed and, to be honest, that time it got to me. I felt pretty let down. You have to remember that Sony and Microsoft were by far the two biggest console manufacturers. Nintendo wasn't doing well and we hadn't thought much about them."I wonder how they feel about it now? Or does it even matter? They still got into the motion game eventually, and momentum shifts all the time.
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