GameSetWatch A Decade Of Xbox.

That exchange between Bill Gates and The Rock in the early 2000s, as artificial and cheesy as it was, did exhibit one thing: Microsoft, at a high level within its corporate structure, knew what kind of audience it was going for. You can see evidence of this with the early Bungie acquisition, the early publisher partnerships for launch titles, the specifications of the Xbox hardware itself, and the celebrities that it paid to pump up the console. Maybe Microsoft was playing heavily off of gamer cliches, but its strategy worked, attracting the 18-34 year-old male demographic.

It’s not a strategy that all game developers should take, aiming for the “hardcore audience.” But when you’re a console maker, it’s about defining the audience, listening to it, and configuring all-important developer relationships to suit those market demands.