xbox 360 design

[Trithemius]

Nothing aside from a featureless box would fit into a minimalist lounge.

You'd need some pastel-shade skins for it too though.

Merch!

[Jake]

it's so fucking ugly i will never play a video game again. i quit life.

[MrHoatzin]

it's so fucking ugly i will never play a video game again. i quit life.

We love you man! Don't do it!

[Intrepid Homoludens]

It looks like an overgrown iPod wannabe.

[Jake]

Here's the thing. The day it launches, I am guessing that for about $15 you will be able to make it look more or less like this:

Meaning everyone can maybe just stop talking about it. The damn thing will be able to semi-indiscreetly disappear into your entertainment center shelf just like every other console ever, except the Gamecube, which needs a double-high shelf since it's toploading.

Also I might as well add, all consoles ever - since the beginning of game consoles - are historically 100% ugly overdesigned hideous pieces of crap, across the board - especially the PS2 and Genesis/Megadrive which both look like terrible 80s BBC sci-fi villain spaceships which got in a horrible traffic accident with the futuristic electric guitars from the end of Bill & Ted.

The original NES was somewhat calm, I guess, but it's the exception that proves the rule, maybe.

[n0wak]

Here's the thing. The day it launches, I am guessing that for about $15 you will be able to make it look more or less like this:

Meaning everyone can maybe just stop talking about it.

Are you talking about the face plates?

Judging by this

http://www.hellogamer.com/2005/05/08/first-look-at-the-xbox-360-skins/

they probably aren't going to make it much better. This isn't necessarily just an XBox thing, as pretty much anything that is skinnable has hideous skins, but I'm having a hard time imagining a simple all-black face plate. Most skins tend to ignore the simple obvious bits.

Check my awesome 2-minute 3am mock-up (would have taken 1 minute if I had Photoshop and not a retarded GIMP)

[netmonkey]

Just like the old Apple computers circa iMac-era.

Appliances are weird, anyway. Like, for example, Samsung makes some really good products, but they're sometimes disguised with the cheesiest most unecessary things. I have this Tv that when not only you turn it on and off it has a horizontal slide doors fade, but also it makes a futuristic noise! I think it's just super cheesy, but the tv image looks great and all. I'm just disapointed that they had to ruin it with bleeps and transitions. It feels completely unprofessional.

[Intrepid Homoludens]

That's....pretty.

[netmonkey]

That hellogamer site has a lot of spoilers, including a cloesup of the dreambox controllers (including dvd player), the real xbox logo (unlike those idiots at idle toes who got it all wrong)...

It's good to play togetha, yoz.

[Intrepid Homoludens]

Ragnar Tornquist's thoughts, posted in his blog, on the Xbox 360 obsession:

...it's really amazing how us game geeks can get fired up by tiny pictures of buttons, logos, and, well, a 'next-gen' memory card, fer cryin' out loud! Okay, so Microsoft's got it going on when it comes to viral marketing (Halo 2, a reasonably engaging first-person shooter (two guns! at the same time! wheee!), was marketed as a bigger event than the Second Coming of Christ - which, you know, it wasn't), and the ourcolony.net site is intriguing and rather brilliantly conceived - but it's still a tiny picture of a memory card. Not even the bloody console itself. Technological fetishism has reached an all time high...or is it low? When the first real pictures of the console itself leaked this weekend, it seemed a bit anti-climatic: Pretty, yes. Revolutionary? It's a plastic box with a circuit board inside. How exciting can it possibly be?

Monday, May 09, 2005

Hmmm, now that I think about this, it's really no different from people's obsession with what Prince Charles and Lady Di had for breakfast the morning of their wedding.