Alternate history: What if Xbox joined the console race a gen earlier?

[HoloDust]

It would make no sense - Sony was not a threat at the time to MS, PC GPUs were just emerging and DirectX was just released in 95, so actual MS push for it to be a standard was not yet necessity for them.

Better question IMO is what would be if MS had more foresight and made something like Steam before Valve did it.