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When Bill Gates and 'The Rock' introduced Xbox

Today, Xbox is synonymous with unlimited fun and entertainment and new and better versions of Xbox are released every few years once, but the time when Xbox was released was tumultous for Microsoft. With Sega’s Dreamcast declining in sale, Sony had a tight grip on the gaming console market with Playstation 2 being the apple of gamers’ eye. Even after it’s release, Xbox was not able to overtake Playstation in terms of sale but over time, it sure carved out a niche of it’s own and gained a whole new fanbase which was Xbox loyalist. But how to promote a new gaming console when there was already one that existed which people liked?

Bill Gates, the Microsoft man, came up with a brilliant idea as usual. He roped in Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson to make a surprise appearence at the launch of Xbox. The move was tactical and smart as Rock was a man who‘s star power was growing exponentially in WWF those days in the ‘Attitude Era’ of WWF. It is to be noted that one of the very first games on Xbox was the WWE RAW. Initially, there were few problems for Xbox as it required a broadband connection and subscription which the other popular consoles at that time did not require but Xbox was the first gaming console to have an inbuilt hard Disk Drive for saving games downloaded from the broadband.

The unveiling was done on 3rd January 2001 in Las Vegas in the famous CES (Consumer Electronics Show). The video shows Rock and Bill Gates engaging in witty exchanges and The Rock asking him about some details of the product. On one instance Rock said that Gates has not left any ‘rock’ unturned in making this console a completely new and different experience for gamers. Here’s the video of the launch:


Also, WWE 2K remembers this event in a tweet in the form of Throwback Thursday.

 

 

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