Saturday 20 March, Apple Offices USA.
Steve Jobs was currently inside a tense emergency meeting alongside several Apple executives, Philips engineers, and Zanki Zagashira as the representative of ZUSUGA, the company responsible for developing video games for iPlay. The atmosphere inside the room felt unusually heavy because this meeting was extremely urgent. It directly concerned the sales performance and public reception of Apple iPlay after its release on 15 March 2000, and now almost five days had already passed since launch.
Unfortunately for Apple, the early results were far from what Steve Jobs had hoped for.
The room was suffocatingly tense. The higher-ranking engineers sat stiffly in their chairs, unable to hide the discomfort on their faces, while several Apple executives avoided direct eye contact completely. Some stared at the documents in front of them as if the papers could save them. Others kept their hands clasped tightly on the table, already bracing themselves for the storm that was about to come.
Steve Jobs stood near the front of the room with a deep frown carved across his face. He had just finished another brutal meeting with Apple's internal executives, and the pressure from iPlay's disappointing early performance was now pressing against his head like a vise. This was not just a bad sales report. This was Apple's first serious attempt to enter the console industry, and after only five days, the situation already looked far more dangerous than anyone wanted to admit.
The numbers were not catastrophic, but they were not impressive either. The public reaction was mixed, the early reviews were colder than expected, and worse, Xbox was currently gaining momentum while iPlay was already being mocked online for technical issues. For a company that prided itself on polish, elegance, and user experience, this was deeply humiliating.
Steve slowly walked across the room, and every footstep made the silence feel heavier. No one dared to interrupt him. Even the Philips engineers looked tense, while Zanki Zagashira quietly watched from his seat with a grim expression.
"So..." Steve finally spoke, his voice controlled but dangerously sharp. "What went wrong?"
Nobody answered immediately.
That silence made his expression darken further.
"Is it because we released after Xbox?" he continued. "Is it because our launch games are not good enough? Are they inferior to Xbox's games? Is the hardware not stable enough? Is the software unfinished? Or is there something else any of you want to say to me before I have to drag the answer out myself?"
And yes, somehow the first five days of iPlay's performance were already subpar compared to Xbox, to the point that it almost felt like a cruel joke inside the industry. Xbox was rising quickly because Microsoft had managed to create a genuinely strong launch environment. Their games were solid, their online system was surprisingly stable, and the public impression toward the console was growing more positive every day.
Meanwhile, Apple's iPlay was struggling far more than expected. On paper, the console looked stylish, modern, and attractive, but real players were already discovering too many issues after only a few days of use. Some complained about unstable online connections, others mentioned lag during gameplay, and a few even reported that the console became strangely hot after switching between games. For a company like Apple, which built its reputation around polish and smooth user experience, this kind of launch problem was deeply embarrassing.
Then one of the head engineers of iPlay finally spoke, his voice careful but clearly nervous. "Honestly, boss... the main problem is that we found several issues that somehow didn't appear during our testing sessions. We are trying to fix them as soon as possible."
Steve Jobs slowly turned toward him.
For a second, he did not say anything.
That silence was worse than shouting.
Then his face darkened.
"How the hell does that happen?" Steve said, his voice suddenly cutting through the room like a knife. "Do we even have a Quality Assurance team, or did we just decorate this project with people holding clipboards?"
The QA leader immediately stiffened in his seat.
Steve's gaze snapped toward him. "You."
The QA leader swallowed.
Steve stepped closer, his anger finally breaking through the thin layer of control he had been forcing onto himself. "What exactly did your team test? What scenarios did you prepare? Did anyone test real user behavior? Did anyone test long play sessions? Did anyone test people switching games repeatedly? Did anyone test unstable internet conditions, peak server load, overheating, cache problems, or anything that actual customers would experience after buying this thing?"
No one answered.
Steve slammed one hand onto the table.
"Then why are players finding these bugs before we did!?"
The room flinched.
"This is not some hobby project made in a garage!" Steve snapped. "This is Apple's first serious console launch! We are not supposed to look like amateurs in front of Microsoft, ZAGE, and the entire gaming industry!"
His voice became lower, but somehow even heavier.
"You all told me the system was ready. You told me the launch build was stable. You told me the user experience was polished enough for release. And now, five days later, customers are discovering floating bugs that should have been caught during testing?"
Steve looked around the room, his eyes sharp with fury.
"That is not a small mistake. That is humiliation."
The Quality Assurance leader sighed before speaking carefully. He clearly knew that whatever he said next would sound like an excuse, but at the same time, hiding the truth would only make the situation worse.
"To be honest, Boss, we had very limited time... extremely limited time," he said. "Just like you said, we had to make iPlay quickly, so most of our testing focused mainly on the performance of the launch games, basic boot stability, controller response, and whether each title could run properly during standard play sessions."
He paused for a moment, then forced himself to continue. "But we didn't test enough edge cases for the core system functions. We didn't push the console through enough long-term stress tests, repeated game switching, unstable network conditions, peak server loads, or situations where users leave games running for hours before changing titles."
The QA leader's face looked increasingly pale as Steve's expression darkened further. "Usually, we would spend far more time focusing on those areas. We would test how normal users behave, how careless users behave, and how extreme users behave. We would try to break the system before customers could. But because the release schedule kept changing and the launch was rushed, we ultimately didn't have enough time to fully cover everything."
He lowered his gaze slightly. "That is our failure. We tested whether iPlay could launch. We did not test enough whether iPlay could survive real customers."
Steve Jobs groaned loudly and pressed his fingers against his forehead for a moment before looking toward the head engineer again.
"And what exactly is the major issue here?" Steve demanded. "Why is this damaging our reputation this badly?"
The head engineer hesitated before answering carefully. "Mostly the servers, sir. They are not stable enough once player traffic peaks. Disconnects are happening far more often than we expected."
Steve's expression immediately darkened.
The engineer quickly continued before Steve exploded again. "And right now, iPlay doesn't have a reconnect feature like Xbox Online or Steam. So once players disconnect during online sessions, they completely lose their match, their session data, and sometimes even their progress."
Several executives immediately started whispering quietly among themselves.
That was bad.
Really bad.
The engineer swallowed nervously before continuing. "Then there's the gameplay lag issue. Certain games begin slowing down after extended sessions, especially if users repeatedly switch between games without restarting the console."
Steve slowly lowered his hand from his forehead.
"Why?"
The engineer looked genuinely uncomfortable now.
"Because... right now iPlay keeps portions of the previous game cache active in memory after users switch titles. We originally thought it would improve loading speed and transition smoothness, but instead it's causing memory instability. Over time the cache stacks improperly, which leads to lag, overheating, frame drops, delayed inputs, and eventually system instability."
The room became silent again.
One of the Philips engineers quietly muttered, "Jesus Christ..." under his breath.
Steve Jobs stared at the engineer in disbelief.
"So let me understand this properly," Steve said slowly, his voice becoming dangerously calm again. "Players buy our console... they play online... they disconnect because our servers can't handle traffic... they lose their session because we don't have reconnect support... then the console starts lagging and overheating because it's holding broken cache memory from previous games?"
The engineer lowered his head slightly.
"Yes... currently that is the situation."
Steve suddenly slammed both hands onto the table so hard that several people visibly flinched.
"Then this thing is unfinished!" Steve shouted.
Nobody dared to respond.
"This is exactly the kind of garbage Apple is NOT supposed to release!" Steve continued furiously. "People buy Apple products because they expect them to WORK. Smoothly. Elegantly. Reliably. And instead we release a next-generation console that disconnects users, destroys online sessions, overheats after game switching, and lags because the system can't even manage its own memory properly?"
His breathing became heavier.
"Do you realize what this looks like outside this room?" Steve asked bitterly. "Microsoft is being praised for stable online infrastructure while we're becoming internet comedy material after five days."
The engineer forced himself to speak again. "We're already working on emergency fixes, sir. We can stabilize parts of the server load issue and redesign the cache cleanup behavior, but..."
"But what?" Steve snapped.
"We need more time."
Steve Jobs scratched his head aggressively before pointing toward everyone in the room. "When I asked whether this project was ready to go, every single one of you told me it was good!" he snapped. "I trusted you all because I can't micromanage every damn thing myself, but now look at this mess!"
His frustration was no longer just anger.
It was disappointment.
Steve had fought hard to bring Apple back into relevance, and iPlay was supposed to represent Apple entering a new era. Instead, only five days after launch, the project was already bleeding reputation publicly while Microsoft was gaining momentum almost effortlessly.
"You know what the worst part is?" Steve continued bitterly. "The hardware itself isn't even terrible. The design isn't terrible. The concept isn't terrible. But none of that matters if the user experience falls apart the moment real customers touch the console."
He pointed toward the sales reports scattered across the table.
"Do you know what people are saying online right now? They're calling iPlay a 'beautiful unstable machine.' They're saying Apple cared more about style than functionality. They're comparing us to Microsoft like we're amateurs entering an industry we don't understand."
Steve laughed once.
A cold, frustrated laugh.
"And the worst part?" he said quietly. "They might be right right now."
Steve Jobs groaned loudly because he honestly could not deny any of it. The pressure from Apple's other executives was already crushing his head nonstop, and now even the game reviews were becoming another disaster added on top of the technical problems.
Then Steve suddenly turned toward Zanki.
"And you, Zanki!" Steve snapped sharply. "What about the video game quality!?"
The entire room immediately became quiet again.
"Our launch games are getting mediocre scores from ZEMITSU and Compute X. The reviews aren't disastrous, but they're nowhere near what we needed for a next-generation console launch!"
Steve pointed angrily toward the review documents scattered across the table.
"How do you explain this!? Apple collaborated with ZUSUGA because we believed you were capable of bringing high-quality games to our platform. We trusted your experience in the industry. But what is this?"
His frustration became even more visible now.
"Xbox launches with games people are genuinely excited about, while our lineup is being described as 'decent but forgettable.' Do you understand how bad that is for us right now?"
Zanki Scratch his head and sigh began to Explain it..
to be continue
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