Eric engström

The gaming world recently lost one of its most quietly influential figures. The Wall Street Journal has learned that Microsoft engineer Eric Engstrom died on December 1st at the age of 55 from complications following an injury. Engstrom, along with Alex St. John and Craig Eisler, played a key role in developing DirectX — the programming interface that made serious Windows gaming viable and cleared a path for the Xbox.

St. John tapped Engstrom in to help make gaming in the upcoming Windows 95 operating system practical. At the time, developers preferred the low overhead and greater control DOS offered over Windows In addition to working on the project, Engstrom helped St. John advocate for the eventual DirectX platform despite a lack of support from Microsoft itself. Windows leader Brad Silverberg even had to fight to keep Engstrom, St. John and Eisler employed.

You might know what happened next. Although it took a while, DirectX made Windows the go-to platform for PC gaming. It also gave Microsoft the foundations for the Xbox and even the Windows CE variant that powered Sega’s Dreamcast.

This wasn’t Engstrom’s only contribution. He participated in the early cellphone indust

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Friends remember Microsoft renegade Eric Engstrom, who suggested a DirectX console

Eric Engstrom passed away this week, leaving friends in mourning for one of the renegades of the Microsoft empire and a brilliant tech innovator.

Engstrom was known as part of the “Beastie Boys,” a trio of evangelists who paved the way for Microsoft’s expansion in games in the late s and early s with DirectX. The expansion eventually enabled Microsoft to launch the Xbox (X signified DirectX) film game console — an enterprise that generated billions of dollars for Microsoft and made it a major player in the game industry.

DirectX is a set of application programming interfaces (APIs) that enable a computer to recognize and run games that can tap that computer’s graphics capabilities. It was a critical technology during the rise of 3D graphics hardware in the s, unifying a scattered market. But within Microsoft, it was a hard sell. Engstrom and his cohorts, Alex St. John and Craig Eisler, convinced Microsoft to invest in DirectX, and then they proselytized it to a skeptical game industry.

Engstrom and his cohorts secretly hired programmers to get the work done, and they had to do an end run arou

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Erik Engström

Swedish businessman

For the American programmer, see Eric Engstrom.

Erik Nils Engström (born 14 June ) is a Swedish businessman and the chief executive officer (CEO) of RELX, a multinational information and analytics company that operates in four market segments: scientific, technical and medical; risk and business information; legal; and exhibitions.

Early life

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Erik Engström is the son of Alice Engström and Dr Kjell Engström of Täby, Sweden, who was managing director of the Swedish Museum of Natural History, Stockholm.^[1] He has a BSc from the Stockholm School of Economics, an MSc from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, and an MBA from Harvard Business School, Harvard University, where he was a Fulbright scholar.^[2]

Career

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Engström has been chief executive of RELX (formerly Reed Elsevier) since , having been chief executive of Elsevier since Before that, he was a partner at General Atlantic, and prior to that was president and chief operating officer of Random House Inc and, before its merger with Random House, president and chief executive officer of Bantam Doubleday Dell, North America. He started his