I get what you’re saying, but it’s probably worth pointing out that the Xbox was built on the ashes of the Dreamcast. The Dreamcast ran Windows CE, a precursor of sorts to Windows Mobile. Microsoft was perfectly happy using an already wounded Sega, who had mismanaged their last two console generations and lost a lot of users to the then fairly new PlayStation line, as the test bed for the software platforms that would eventually power the Xbox, though under a slightly different hardware platform. This is why, among other things, the Duke controller looks very much like a Dreamcast controller.

Like a lot of things that Gates did, he was standing on the shoulders of giants.

It’s neither untrue or whitewashing to point out the well documented fact that Gates like to play video games and perhaps you should check out my other comment in this thread.