Designing the Look of the 360

Gamasutra has a piece up where they talk to the folks that designed the look of the Xbox 360. From the article: "We are responsible for the whole look and feel, the outward aesthetic. This includes the features, how it looks as overall design language, how it works with the controller and peripherals - working on the camera, the charging systems for wireless remotes - and then the box itself, obviously."

Comments

Play?

[turtled]

This all means nothing to me. I want to see how the games play more than how the system looks. Others may feel different.

On the other hand, if I was interested in design, I would have liked to see it more rack compatable, fitting in with stereo equipment as for it would be the living room media hub.

Re:Desiging?

[kryogen1x]

No, they mean De-Siging. As in removing your sig. Take off every sig.

Reason for the concavity

[snorklewacker]

Lovelady: (what a name!) We talk about it in terms of the inhale - it's like the console is breathing in, pulling in all of this energy before you release it again.

So basically ... it sucks?

Personally I think that it's a pretty crap design.

[selsine]

Personally I think that it's a pretty crap design. After all of the flack that Microsoft got over the look of the first Xbox (which I own) I really expected something cool. When I was fist shown screen shots of the new Xbox I was sure that they were fakes, or that it was a prototype that hadn't been painted yet.

The article is an interesting read, however I am a bit disappointed that she didn't answer the stackability question. That and the price are the major stumbling blocks for me actually getting this system. I don't know where I could fit the Xbox 360 in my entertainment unit.

Re:Why White?

[senocular]

Apple.

Astro Studios LINK

[Numeric]

I checked out some of their other design work, its cool, but nothing I have ever noticed.

http://www.astrostudios.com/

Just my opinion

[laxcat]

From a shear industrial design standpoint (nevermind rackmounting or anything else, just how does it look...), MS made by far the ugliest console last time around and are dead set on making this round no different.

Sure it's better than the horrible eyesore that the original XBOX was, but not enough. The prototypes for the PS3 and Revolution blow this thing away.

Re:Just my opinion

[arose]

And the Revolution is sleek, simple, and forgettable.

You could almost think that Nintendo wants you to concentrate on the controllers and the games...

Re:Drive quality

[Leiterfluid]

The Xbox had the same issue. If the drive came from a particular vendor, they were known to generate disc read errors. I was actually working at Xbox Live at the time I got one of these drives. It was less than a month after getting my system, and they wanted me to pay to have the product shipped for replacement. I told them the BBB would be more than happy to register yet another complaint on their drives.

How it looks

[FidelCatsro]

Well here we are reviewing another console design So here's a quick poll

What do you consider the The ascetics of the Xbox 360 to be akin to
[ ] I bent my wookie
[ ] The Chewbacca defence
[ ] What happens when you roll play-do and forget that your not meant to keep rolling just at the middle when making snakes
[ ] Now i know why they don't work for apple
[ ] Burma shave
[ ] An eloquent design improving greatly on the concept seen in the previous console
[ ] Its a DVD player Jim , but not as we know it
[ ] hey who spray painted my sound blaster extigy and punched it in the stomach
[ ] It suxors
[ ] It r teh Rox
[ ] An Audi [TT] in console form
[ ] I always give stupid answers in polls so I'm going to say a rotund pillar

Looks of the 360

[ec_hack]

Sonny, the 360s were beautiful machines. Lots of blinking lights, switches, dials, even a large nameplate on top. The big emergency stop was always there in front, taunting you to pull it. When the new 370s came out with only a couple of lights on the front panel, I knew an era had passed.

Everytime I see one of these stories with "360" in the front, I flash back to my college days as an operator of an IBM 360/22 in a corporate data center. I'm officially old.

not the mainframe

[TheGratefulNet]

am I the only one wwho saw that title and thought about the ibm 360, from many years ago?

xbox? what's that? is that some kind of crossover patch box or something?

Re:Personally I think that it's a pretty crap desi

[Keeper]

1) I'm not saying it isn't a good idea, but I think it is dumb that everyone is constantly ripping the xbox (and only the xbox) for not being rackable when no-one else has done it either.

Making it rackable forces you to sacrafice a number of desirable features, the biggest being portability -- everyone complains about how large the xbox is; to be stackable in your entertainment center, it has to be even larger. If they do that, you can forget about it fitting in your backpack. Additionally, you HAVE to have space setup in your entertainment center to hold the box; it would be too large to store next to it. There are additional cooling considerations you have to account for. And it generally makes the unit more expensive.

2) Yes, it was smaller than most av equipment. The depth was about right, but the width was way off.

Its fine that you don't like it, but I get tired of seeing endless posts about how fugly it is compared to xyz, when xyz is so ugly it makes me want to barf. :p

end game

[macshit]

Man, those clumsy slashdot editors seem to have chopped off the end of the story! Here, I'll fill it in:

"... and then, to celebrate our triumph of design, our mastery of every nuance of the gaming console's form, we all got completely smashed on champagne the night before the deadline, and fell into a deep sleep.

Unable to wake us, but knowing the deadline had come, my teenage nephew "buzz" panicked and submitted some random photo he found on the website of a Taiwanese PC-maker.

A shame, I suppose, but ... maybe the world just wasn't ready for what we had done. Someday, though, someday..."