Xbox 360 Lightsynth

Ophion writes "Renowned digital artist Jeff Minter of Llamasoft has created a new lightsynth that will be built into the Xbox 360. More information on the console's music player is available from Microsoft." From the post: "I believe it finally begins to achieve the potential that I saw all those years ago when I first made Psychedelia... and I am happier with it than I have ever been with anything I've created in my entire career. And we got it into the firmware again... Microsoft firmware. Of the Xbox360 for goat's sake. At last... after more than 20 years' work, one of my lightsynths is going to reach a decent sized audience. Millions and millions..."

Comments

I wonder...

[KDR_11k]

... how many will now call Mr. Minter a sellout.

Re:I wonder...

[Golias]

As soon as I get done googling Jeff Minter, reading TFA and figuring out what the hell a Lightsynth is and why the hell I should care, I'll be happy to call him a sellout. ... Not that I consider "sellout" to be a bad thing. That word stopped being an insult which carried any weight sometime around 1972.

Re:I wonder...

[einTier]

I don't think the point is to make a game. There's two ways I see this program. One, it's just a cool screensaver to use while you're streaming MP3's during a party -- and hey, you can play with it. Two, it's meant to be used under the influence of really heavy hallucinogins. If you've never used psychedelic drugs, then that might be hard to understand, but let me assure you that combined with the right drugs, that "meaningless crap" could be the most profound thing ever.

Rambling...

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe it finally begins to achieve the potential that I saw all those years ago when I first made Psychedelia... and I am happier with it than I have ever been with anything I've created in my entire career. And we got it into the firmware again... Microsoft firmware. Of the Xbox360 for goat's sake. At last... after more than 20 years' work, one of my lightsynths is going to reach a decent sized audience. Millions and millions...

Damn... And I thought I could ramble on... and on... for several lines really well... but this guy really has me beat... because he sure knows how to ramble a lot better than I could... and I thought I was an expert at rambling... but he's a lot better than me at rambling... and taking one idea... and dragging it into what could be several paragraphs... or rambling... about one idea... much better than I could... and I thought I was really good at rambling... on and on... for a long time... but he has me beat. :)

Re:millions...

[SoVeryWrong]

According to Microsoft, they've sold approximately 20 million Xboxes as of year end 2004.

Redpoint (artists in the video)'s record label

[Acronym]

If you like the music in the demo video, visit http://www.hiddenmusic.co.uk/ - the website of Redpoint's label.

Let me be the first to say something POSITIVE

[sirenbrian]

Jeez, four comments already, all whining. C'mon, this is a good guy who writes great games, LOVES his work and loves to make other people happy. You'll know I'm right when you actually try this thing and see, and feel, what a cool thing it is. And if you'd waited 20 years for a project to reach a wide audience, you'd write a fair bit too. Nicely done, Jeff, Giles and crew.

Re:Let me be the first to say something POSITIVE

[Anonymous Coward]

furthermore, his previous work is basically the foundation for much of modern audio visualization programs (iTunes; WinAmp, WinMediaPlayer, various xmmc plugins). this software is likely to further influence the field, given it's unique qualities. there has been some experimentation with 3d visualizations and various filters and effects, but this is pretty much state of the art. it's running in HD, and quite fluidly. it's realtime interactive, and it should be pretty accessible being in ROM and using a wireless analouge controller. 4 people can control the thing simultaneously using a variety of control inputs (buttons, sticks,.. I don't know the exact mappings). impressively, this thing is under a half meg of code. check out the video's, which are compressed, low resolution, low framerate relative to the actual realtime xbox360 HD output...

Re:Wow...

[Golias]

Then again, I can't even remember to close an HTML "bold" tag, so what do I know?

Quicktime?

[John Harrison]

Is anybody else impressed that Minter has posted movie files of his xbox 360 lightsynth in quicktime format? I'm sure someone at MS is having a fit about this right now.

Re:Wow...

[Ford Prefect]

Dude. I've been around gaming since PONG, and I've never heard of either of those games!

I think Mr. Yak's problems are that he has an uncanny knack of choosing hardware platforms which are doomed to utter failure.

Witness his numerous games for the Atari ST and Commodore Amiga, and then the Atari-commissioned Llamazap for the Falcon 030. If you've never heard of that particular Atari computer, then that should indicate how successful it was.

He wrote Tempest 2000 for the Atari Jaguar. Then another version for the Nuon. Which you've probably not heard of either. Oh, and he was working on Unity for the Nintendo Gamecube, but presumably some Nintendo bigwigs sensed that impending-doom vibe - the game got cancelled instead of the console.

So, basically, Minter on Xbox 360 means that the Xbox is going to die a horrible, horrible death in the marketplace... ;-)

Re:Wow...

[torpor]

Dude. I've been around gaming since PONG, and I've never heard of either of those games!


hello dude, you must be american. minters' big successes in the early 80's were .. mostly .. for early UK 8-bit scenery ...

i was always pretty surprised, personally, by the secular nation of american video game markets in the 80's.. a lot of really cool shit happened that the average american video junky missed out on because of the different 'scene' in the states ..