Father of Xbox says PC gamers used to throw drinks at him for daring to suggest “Halo might be a good game” before the FPS console boom

FPS games are ubiquitous on consoles nowadays, but there was a time when the concept was so novel and rare that gamers would allegedly launch drinks at Seamus Blackley – often cited as the father of Xbox – for merely suggesting that Halo: Combat Evolved could be a good game. How dare he?

Perfect Dark and Goldeneye 007 certainly proved FPS games could work without a mouse and keyboard, and were definitely noticeable steps up from what had been attempted before, but neither were quite as tight as the shooters that had thrived on PC for years – your Dooms and Quakes and such.

In an interview with Expansion Pass, Blackley talked about what promoting Halo: Combat Evolved was like during “a time period where people would f***ing die on this hill, probably literally, that a shooter would never work on a console.” Pretty awkward for the man who built a console, the OG Xbox, set to launch alongside an FPS.

“Crazy town,” Blackley said. “Dudes threw beverages at me that exploded on me because they got so frustrated that I was saying that Halo might be a good game on a console.”

PC gamers allegedly complained that you had to have a mouse and be sitting at a desk to enjoy the thrill of digitally mowing down aliens, but to Blackley, someone with a background in physics, he would say: “I understand time and rotation, like, it’s going to be fine.”

Of course, those complaints didn’t make much of a dent on anything apart from Blackley’s clothes. Halo became the Xbox’s killer app and, more than that, legitimized the entire genre on consoles with lots of small but smart design choices, like letting players throw grenades and use melee attacks without having to equip dedicated weapons. It didn’t hurt that Halo: CE was also plainly fantastic, full of creative levels and a suite of multiplayer maps that felt more like a party game built for chaos.

The iconic game’s returning later this year with Halo: Campaign Evolved, a full-on remake with three additional missions.

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Kaan freelances for various websites including Rock Paper Shotgun, Eurogamer, and this one, Gamesradar. He particularly enjoys writing about spooky indies, throwback RPGs, and anything that’s vaguely silly. Also has an English Literature and Film Studies degree that he’ll soon forget.