Xbox 360: Born to be Wild (or Mild)

Last night Crave attended a lecture by Jonathan Hayes, lead designer for the Xbox 360. Little did we know he'd end up letting us prod and poke at the finished hardware. Speaking at London's Design Museum on the factors that influenced the console's 'organic' design, Hayes let designers and devout gamers look at the finished hardware and peripherals, as well as slipping some interesting tidbits of information our way.

• In order to reach its 28 November release date, the Xbox 360 went into full production last week. The finished console, controller and packaging were on show to prove it.

• The finished hardware will connect up to portable devices including digital cameras, the iPod Shuffle and even the Sony PSP. We know, because we plugged all of them into the Xbox 360 ourselves.

• There will be two versions of the remote control, used to navigate the console's media menus. Both models borrow heavily from the standard Windows Media Center remote, even down to the Windows button. The basic model will come with the £280 pack for a limited time, and the larger one will sell separately. The latter has more buttons and lights up, which will be useful for home cinema use.

The lecture was also a great opportunity to see prototype designs of the console. According to Hayes, Microsoft used a four-axis design template, with 'Wild' and 'Mild' on the horizontal, and 'Organic' to 'Architectural' on the vertical. Gamers erred more towards organic when shown potential Xbox 360 designs, and Microsoft is offering interchangeable faceplates to let people decide whether they want to take a walk on the Wild or Mild side.

As Hayes commented, gamers tend to be very passionate about their console design, and he found that in general they are moving away from the straight lines of the Dieter Rams-inspired PlayStation 2. So, the iconic gesture that Hayes and his team is making with the Xbox 360? He describes it as 'Inner-Outer Duality' -- the concave shape of the console is like a controlled intake of breath, whereas the original convex Xbox was a console so powerful, its innards were literally having to be contained.

It might sound like designer mumbo-jumbo, but it's good to see how seriously console aesthetics are being taken these days -- no longer are these boxes going to be hidden away round the back of the TV. And just by glancing over the design templates you could see how long the project had been in development. The final controller design document was dated 21 April 2004 -- over a year before it was finally unveiled at E3 2005.

The next round of major Xbox news will come from X05, Microsoft's annual Xbox preview event, which is happening on 4 and 5 October in Amsterdam. Crave will have all the news as it happens, and of course we'll be first in line for one of the consoles when they launch in November. -GC

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