Even though that him minesweeper Today it is remembered as one of the most mythical Microsoft games, its beginnings were not so simple.
Even though the company was full of logically minded computer engineers, the title did not attract everyone to Microsoft.
“Minesweeper was the most polarizing game,” says Bruce Ryan, who was the director of entertainment product at Microsoft, in the book minesweeper by Kyle Orlando Ars Technica.
Everyone knows that both the minesweeper like the titles that came later like the Lonely, They were mainly intended to teach users how to navigate an operating system, but at the time they weren’t so clear on whether to include it or not.
The decision to include it definitively It was thanks to the obsession that Bill Gates had with the minesweeper,
The founder of Microsoft played for so long that he even told Bruce Ryan that the beginner mode was passed minesweeper in 5 seconds in Mike Hallman’s office.
“This was early at night. So we went there, at seven at night. Hallman was a former Boeing executive, and he wasn’t a funny guy, so… the idea that Bill is sitting there after the job, going to the president’s office so we can play minesweeperit was just a strange image,” recalls Bruce Ryan in the book.
Bill Gates, who is not “a big beer drinker”, bets strongly on the future of Heineken
This obsession with the curious game was, without a doubt, the reason why both Bill Gates and Microsoft begin to incorporate games into their operating systems.
In 1990, Windows 3.0 was released, which was the first to have a copy of minesweeper, reverse and Lonelyone of the most successful projects of all time for Microsoft.
Little by little, Microsoft began to give more importance to games. Something that, over time, implanted an idea in the company: the development of the first Xbox.
Although it is true that the computers of that time were capable of moving games, a console would change absolutely everything. Now, with the Xbox Series X | S on the market for a couple of years, it is easy to see the success of this idea, but at the time, everything was doubtful.
Besides, Windows controls the vast majority of the PC video game marketBut in the early ’90s, convincing people that gaming would be a key part of the company’s future was not easy.
