In November 2014, Larry “Major Nelson” Hryb walked into a Microsoft conference room and picked up a controller. Running on a PC in front of him was a crude prototype for one of the most important Xbox games of the decade: an online multiplayer pirate adventure set on a vast open ocean.

“The shark was like a square with another big square on top of it,” Hryb, a former senior comms director at Xbox, tells Inverse, “but it was a proof of concept.” At the time, they called it Athena.

That game would go on to become Rare’s Sea of Thieves, an Xbox exclusive and one of the first titles ever released for Game Pass. Hryb still considers that demo one of his favorite memories from two decades spent at Xbox, but it also marked a turning point for a company struggling to win over gamers a year after the release of the Xbox One.

Looking back now, a full 10 years on from the launch of Xbox One on November 22, 2013, that piece of hardware has largely faded from the conversation. Like Nintendo’s Wii U, it’s bound to be remembered as a disappointment when compared to its successor (and predecessor). Yet the story of the Xbox One generation is one of big swings and, ultimately, redemption.

As of Sonos’ fourth quarter earnings, CEO Patrick Spence was teasing the company’s entrance into an entirely new product category in 2024. Sonos is known for its speakers, but due to less-than-stellar performance in 2023 and a major loss to Google in a battle over speaker software, the company is looking to branch out.

So far, the expectation is Sonos’ next product is headphones. AirPods are estimated to be at least a billion-dollar business for Apple — up until this point the closest Sonos has come to “personal” audio is the Roam, a portable speaker that works over Bluetooth or Wi-Fi. It makes sense to try headphones.

But there’s a real opportunity for something bigger. Something outside of the company’s audio comfort zone: TVs.