Stupid, Stupid xBox
ilikecode.wordpress.com
Stupid, Stupid xBox
1–10 of 185 posts
Re: Stupid, Stupid xBox
#2I think it's funny how Nat capitalizes "xBox". The official capitalization that was finally settled on was "Xbox". It annoys the marketing people to no end when people capitalize it wrong.
I always thought xBox looked cooler.
Re: Stupid, Stupid xBox
#3My Xbox is the only product/service I use where I feel that I am directly interacting with Microsoft. For me, the Xbox is the last area where Microsoft is relavent.
Re: Stupid, Stupid xBox
#4He has a massive point -- "Why can’t I write a game for xBox tomorrow using $100 worth of tools and my existing Windows laptop and test it on my home xBox or at my friends’ houses".
I am wiling to guess that game development will follow the path of app stores. Consoles like the OUYA [1] will start to take over. The cycle from development to distribution will be cut by orders of magnitude. xBox needs to get on it and so do the other consoles!
[1] http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ouya/ouya-a-new-kind-of-...
Re: Stupid, Stupid xBox
#5I think it's funny how Nat capitalizes "xBox". The official capitalization that was finally settled on was "Xbox". It annoys the marketing people to no end when people capitalize it wrong. I always thought xBox looked cooler.
It totally does. I always thought the official was "XBOX"; "Xbox" looks like the way someone uninformed would write it or that it was an afterthought of a product.
Re: Stupid, Stupid xBox
#6For the love of all that is holy, please make the font darker.
Re: Stupid, Stupid xBox
#7"how it is crushing its original console competitors"
Previous gen:
> Xbox sales: 24 million
> PS2 sales: 153 million
Current gen:
> Xbox 360 sales: 76 million
> Wii sales: 100 million
> PS3 sales: 70 million
(all data from each console's respective Wikipedia)
How is it "crushing" its competitors?
Otherwise, I bought an XBox360 recently to get the Kinect for openFrameworks hacking and played a little bit with the console. All the points in the article regarding the UI are spot on - it is TERRIBLE to use. Nintendo's UIs are no reference either, but at least they're functional, while Sony's XMB is actually quite good (although the PS Vita's OS is a horrible thing to behold, which is scary for the PS4).
Re: Stupid, Stupid xBox
#8Claiming that the Xbox (360? since that's what's shown in the screenshots) crushed its competition is disingenuous at best, since the Wii outsold it massively, and the PS3 has outsold it even after launching a year after.
Re: Stupid, Stupid xBox
#9"how it is crushing its original console competitors" Previous gen: > Xbox sales: 24 million > PS2 sales: 153 million Current gen: > Xbox 360 sales: 76 million > Wii sales: 100 million > PS3 sales: 70 million (all data from each console's respective Wikipedia) How is it "crushing" its competitors? Otherwise, I bought an XBox360 recently to get the Kinect for openFrameworks hacking and played a little bit with the con…
The PS3 has actually overtaken the X360. Also note that the PS3 came out a full year after the X360... so... yeah. :)
Re: Stupid, Stupid xBox
#10Though I can't speak to the internal politics of Microsoft, I can say that as a gamer I don't remember ever getting upset at the pain points the author listed. Granted, I'm coming from a technical background (as are most people here), so I'm obviously not in the perspective of the small child the author sometimes takes in the picture captions. However, I feel there's a tension between the complexity of an application and the affordances it provides. To use one of the author's examples, choosing where to save an update (a useful affordance to have, I think) requires that the user suffer a bit more complexity. In my experience, the xBox doesn't manage this complexity poorly.
That being said, the author has a strong point in regards to the indie game market. Game development could and should be as simple as it is on Android because the platform's support is there... it's just locked behind layers of legal and financial obstacles. I'd love to see an xBox Live market where indie games are strongly promoted, and I can't imagine the cost to Microsoft would be strong enough to outweigh the revenue gains they'd make if they took a percentage of sales.