Where is MS Taking the 360?

The Inquirer has an article up asking the question where is Microsoft taking the 360? The author had a chance to sit down with UK Xbox head man Stephen McGill to get a sense of what they want to do. From the article: "You gotta love the PR hype and mud slinging that goes on during the run up to a really, really major competitive product launch. Sony and Microsoft are at loggerheads over their upcoming next-generation releases, and while we have all the tech specs (relatively) nailed and the hype about what will make each console Gods Gift to 14 Year Olds, what about the actual direction in which the two companies are pulling their franchises?"

Comments

Where is MS Taking the 360?

[acxr is wasted]

Around in circles!

jerk

V-chips

[warmgun]

Five will get you twenty that now they're considering putting in a V-chip style device. What better feature to advertise to parents than the ability to lock out Mature or Adults Only games in light of the recent ridiculousness?

Re:V-chips

[Suddenly_Dead]

Eh, the Xbox had a parental lock as well. You could set maximum game ratings (ESRB) and movie ratings, protected by a password.

I'm not sure, but I wouldn't doubt that the PS2 had the feature as well.

Re:V-chips

[Suddenly_Dead]

Actually, I Googled it, and this does sort of add something new. Apparently, when you set up a profile for the system (it supports multiple user accounts, sort of like a PC, for storing seperated save games and settings in a house with multiple gamers), you can set the person's age. If the parent wishes, they can instruct the Xbox 360 to automatically restrict games based on the age.

It's not really any different functionally from the old way, it must makes it easier and doesn't require knowledge of the ESRB. Sounds like a pain though, I used to play T rated games when I was younger than 13 and have grown up fine. Parents setting blocks based on their kids' maturity level would still be best, but I suppose all can't be bothered.

It's definately going to be hyped though. That's already begun.

Where are they taking it?

[gakon5]

Franchises? You mean the console? From what I can tell, the Xbox 360 is going to be a media box that happens to play games. It does TV, DVDs, streams movies and music, lets you buy music, wire into a PC, and all this other stuff that could pretty much remove every other piece of media hardware in your basement. Well, it probably could. Oh, did I mention it plays games too? That's pretty neat. Sony appears to be taking the same route, being a media company at heart anyway. And as for Nintendo, they don't appear to be taking much of an interest in media-tising the Revolution.

Wired Mag has Great X-Box Article

[DavidD_CA]

This article from Wired really gave a good perspective of where Microsoft is taking the X-Box:

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.06/xbox.html

From that article:

For Allard, Xbox 360 is all about gaming. For Microsoft, it's about gaming - and a whole lot more. The big picture isn't 10 million hardcore gamers trash-talking one another over a massively multiplayer version of Halo 3. It's 100 million Middle Americans using Xbox 360 as the linchpin of their Windows-powered digital home.

huh?

[AaronBrethorst]

The author of the FA refers to an XML development standard that will ease writing software for the XBox 360. I'm guessing he's actually referring to XNA and XNA Studio.