Speaking in the third part of an interview Peter Moore, now head of EA Sports and one-time Xbox boss, has stated that the reason Microsoft dropped the original Xbox was the hard drive. “The hard drive in every Xbox killed us; we we're still selling it at $199 and the hard drive was like $70. That's why we prematurely left the original Xbox, because the more we were selling – there was still great demand – it was killing us, and there was no way to bring the price down”, he said.

Moore also discussed divisions in Microsoft over the decision to move into gaming. “There was a vocal minority that disagreed with videogames as a cultural phenomenon – the content we were doing – we did M rated, we did allow GTA to be published on the platform and I had no issues with that… and then the drain on the company's stock price, because we were a multi-billion dollar investment group and it had an impact on the stock price”, he uttered

Moore did say of the financial aspect of the Xbox business - "And the [profit and loss forecasts] of what we were doing would absolutely make your hair curl."

You can see the full interview over on The Guardian's website. For more on Rare, see SPOnG's recent Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts preview and Viva Piñata: Pocket Paradise review.