Microsoft’s celebration of Xbox’s 20th anniversary has been intriguing so far, if not a little odd. Rather than a more conventional series of gimmicks designed to honor the console’s triumphs over the years, the recently unveiled Power On documentary has also revealed quite a bit about the company’s many missteps, one of which has to do with its unfortunate rejection of a little game called GTA 3.

The revelation comes in part three of Power On, titled ‘And It Didn’t Turn On’ – another fairly blatant admission of trouble in paradise. This comes on top of the fact the company is now selling an official red ring of death poster and, in the final episode of the docuseries, openly concedes to having made a mistake with its closure of Fable developer Lionhead Studios back in 2016. 

While Fable is now in good hands with Playground Studios, the team behind Forza Horizon 5, it’s still interesting to see a company as massive as Microsoft being candid about its many wrong turns – one of which, obviously, involved passing on GTA 3.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yappZvmxcP8

The topic is brought up after former Microsoft art director Kiki Wolfkill discusses the need to look for games that were already partially in development due to the short period of time between the original Xbox’s announcement and target launch date. Kevin Bachus, who worked in third party relations for Microsoft between 1999 and 2001, picks up the discussion, referring to an intercontinental “barnstorming tour” designed to convince developers all over the world that the company knew what it was doing. 

“One day we presented a new idea from a small game publisher that had been presented to us and said, ‘Hey, we want to dust off one of the 2D games that we had done for PC, we’re going to really invest in it, we think it’s going to be really exciting’,” Bachus says in the documentary. 

“And these newly important executives at Xbox who would review all the pitches from publishers and developers, they said, ‘I don’t think that game is going to be able to make the transition from 2D to 3D’,” adds Drew Angeloff, who worked at Xbox as its tools and middleware program manager at the time. 

“They felt it was complicated,” says Bachus. “They didn’t really understand the user interface. They thought that it was based on a game that hadn’t been all that successful. To my surprise it was rejected.”

That game, as we’re sure you can tell by now, was Grand Theft Auto 3.

GTA 3, which launched as a timed exclusive for the PS2, ended up shipping almost 15 million units. It was the best selling game of 2001 and the only game that outperformed it the following year was its own sequel. 

Given GTA’s ubiquity now, it’s difficult to think of a bigger mistake Microsoft execs could have made. Still, it’s a testament to the quality of Power On that the company has been this open about its history, actively acknowledging even its most egregious pitfalls.

On the subject of Grand Theft Auto, be sure to check out our interview with Rockstar North co-studio head Rob Nelson about how GTA Online has gone from a twinkle in Rockstar’s eye to the home of Dr. Dre’s new music.

Written by Cian Maher on behalf of GLHF.

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