[5] After college, he studied high energy physics at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, until the Superconducting Supercollider project was cancelled in 1993.

Seamus Blackley, a physics expert and experienced pilot, had just been hired on at Looking Glass Technologies, and he was well placed to see where the current simulators fell short of what they could be.

Gates had been impressed with the technical achievements of Trespasser, and he helped Blackley to secure a job at Microsoft in February 1999 as Program Manager for Entertainment Graphics, initially working on DirectX.

[12] During 1999, Sony introduced the PlayStation 2, which they marketed as a platform for the living room that would outdo Microsoft Windows and Linux.

[12] Blackley had already recognized that part of Microsoft's problems for gaming support was the vast number of possible configurations they had to deal with, and their attempts with technologies like DirectX to standardize these.

While on a flight from Boston back to Seattle after visiting his girlfriend, Blackley came up with the idea of having Microsoft design its own console, with standardized hardware, and able to tap into a larger pool of hardware resources due to the company's influence as to beat Sony at its own game.

[12] This led to the initial Xbox proposal, which Gates eventually approved, and helped assemble the team that designed and built the device.