In May 2005, Microsoft’s J Allard, a rising star who helped launch the software giant’s Xbox video game console, made a bet with Newsweek editor N’Gai Croal, a bet that would become somewhat of a legend in the industry.
At issue was the anticipated level of success by Sony’s upcoming PlayStation Portable handheld gaming device. Allard was skeptical of Croal’s forecast that the PSP could sell faster than the PlayStation 2, and thus was born a gentlemen’s wager.
Croal forecast that Sony would sell 10 million PSP units within a year of its launch, give or take three months. Allard thought that unlikely.
The stakes: If Allard lost, he would have to wear a dreadlock wig for all of May 2006, including during Microsoft’s presentation at the Electronic Entertainment Expo, the video game industry’s big annual convention. If Croal lost, he would have to let Allard shave his famous dreads in front of the E3 throngs.
Well, Croal won, but Allard didn’t make good on the bet. He didn’t attend E3 last year so Croal couldn’t even heckle him about it.
But heckling is what the Internet is for. Earlier this week, Croal posted a “dread watch” on his blog at Newsweek, saying:
“[T]oday marks the 360th day to go by since E3 2006, where our infamous bet with James ‘J’ Allard was expected to be honored. Yet nearly one year later, the dread wig has yet to take its rightful place upon his shiny bald pate for the agreed upon month-long duration.”
The tactic worked. On his biography page at Microsoft’s Web site, Allard posted the above photo with a mea culpa about failing to honor his word:
“In 2006, I had shifted my focus to a new project called Zune, didnt present at E3 the annual games conference and I had forgotten about the challenge. He reminded me a couple weeks back that I never made good on the bet so here are the promised dreads 360 days after the last E3 Xbox press conference.”
Allard did manage to get in a couple digs at Croal, saying the journalist had “gushed” over the possibilities of the PlayStation 2 when that machine launched in 2000, and noting that “a number of promises in the article went unmet”. He ended on a friendly note, however, saying that even if he had won, he couldn’t have brought himself to shave Croal’s dreads.
Trackback