IDFuel, the Industrial Design Weblog - Post details: Consoles Galore

Consoles Galore

05/18/05

So, for the past 2 weeks the videogame world has frothed itself into an orgy of leaks, fake renderings + videos, release parties, AR games, and generally way too much hype. The simple truth of it is that Microsoft is in a death-match with Sony ( ...who is possibly allied with Apple ) over your living room. This generation of consoles is no longer about games, which is why it might be a good idea to get your next game box from Nintendo.
consoles galore

Microsoft's XBox 360, Sony's Playstation 3, and the Nintendo Revolution are the home consoles. There's a whole other fight going on in your pocket between Sony's PSP and all of the Nintendo offerings: GameBoy Advance SP, Nintendo DS, and GameBoy Micro. I'm not going to try and get into a direct analysis of the specs of each of these beasts, since the actual performance and "fun factor" will have less to do with GHz and more with positioning in the market. My goal with this article is to give the reader a good solid overview of each product, and hopefully provide some insight into the designers inspiration and goals.

First off, it's the biggest hype machine - the XBox 360
xbox 3/4 view

Momentum has been growing ever since a few weeks after the release of Halo 2 for the original Xbox. The first glimpses at the hardware came from a simple online Alternate Reality game hosted at OurColony.net . Following the massive success of the ilovebees campaign which promoted Halo 2, Microsoft has found a really good way of focusing advertising on its core demographic. In addition, in order to capture its more casual, or dare I say vapid users, it threw a huge bash on MTV this past Thursday to release its product a mere 4 days before E3, where videogame consoles are traditionally unveiled.

hobbit vs ant

Both the videos on OurColony, and the MTV special had lots of fun goodies on the design process, and even showed early concept models. (Yay!) Wired and the Seattle Times have good articles on the design process and intent behind the 360 you can find images of these early concepts here and here. The development was shared between firms in California and Japan (Astro Studios and Hers Experimental Design Laboratory of Japan, I believe) with the Japanese being behind the color, and the Americans behind the form.
First off, the creamy "chill" color (their term) is reminiscent of the Apple IPod, and Sony lines from about 3 years ago, but I'm not going to be too hard on them for using white - it's trendy, and ... it's white. You can't own white. What I will come down on them for is using white next to all the silvers, dark grays to black, and wood tones in the average living room. Also, this "storm trooper" white makes the gentle curves of the unit seem more like a piece of porcelain than a machine which plays gritty, violent, adult, testosterone filled games. The first XBox was ugly, but it was what it was - covered in cooling fins, bulging with power, dark, brooding, with a huge controller not meant for kids. The form of this new machine is invoking the feeling of "inhale" (their words again.) I'm sorry, but what the hell does that have to do with popping your friends head off at 300 yards with a sniper rifle? (which is what the XBox is really all about) Maybe gasp, or an exhausted exhale (which is really what your chest looks like - doesn't any body know anything about hatha breathing?) but inhale is too close to suck. I can understand their motivations to make cooling more efficient and be innovative with their form, but the end result seems more like stretched fabric or the diaphisis of a bone.

xbox new and old

The details of the box are also a bit muddled, or unsure. The power button for example is huge and ringed in light, which looks better when stood on end like the spine of a book, but when it's horizontal, nothing relates to anything else. It's got very strong linear elements, but then doesn't line them up very well. All the face features are very rounded too, giving it a feeling of simplicity and safety, which doesn't jibe with the more acute angles created by the concave perimeter.

xbox controllers

Now onto the good stuff - the controller. Wireless at last, but that comes at the cost of weight and bulk slapped on the back of the unit. The controller is great looking, but like the main unit, it's a little too soft and creamy. The form is really just a derivative of Logitech's wireless controller, with shorter handlebars and a couple of really nice subtle edges blended in. I'm also interested in the rubber looking pad at the bottom. Is it rubber? Will soft rubber next to a parting line be too sharp? Will you ever feel that area while holding the unit? We'll find out when it comes out in November, or if some of our geek friends in the industry can let us get our hands on it early. Either way, I'm excited. The only problems I see are the candy like ABXY buttons which might get slick after prolonged gaming, and the "X" logo in the center is a little reminiscent of a palm tree, but maybe that's just me.

The next contender - Sony's PS3
ps3 3/4 view

Well, these images just got released without a whole lot of fanfare at E3 In Los Angeles, so the hype count is way below that of the XBox 360, but that doesn't mean the fans don't care. There is already lots whining about the droopy controller, and scrambling to get machine specs right. As for the form, it's very reminiscent of the PS2 if you look at the back. Basically there's a large book resting on a smaller one, but in this case, the top book is an extruded oval. It's a nice form. It looks fat in the standing 3/4 views, but once you can see a bit of the top cross section, it gets a lot better. It's like a fin or a sail, and it's got some inner beef, but the edges are slender and sharp. Also, the radiused side makes it feel like 1 part of a larger whole, as if you could put 12 of them in a circle, and they would all line up. Over all, the form is sleek and technological.

ps3 front

Now for some comments about the detail. It looks like they're using a slot-loading optical drive (blue ray discs maybe?) which is great, and far more elegant than the standard clunky "cup holder" drive on most machines. It's hard to tell what's going on along the front face of the machine from the few good photos available, but it seems that the shelf under the drive bay extends under a door which continues the arc of the top of the unit. What's under there? Probably controller ports, USB ports, memory card slots, but who knows. The one thing missing from the face is a dark ruby lens for IR used by most standard TV remotes. Controllers can be wireless using RF, but I doubt they are going to completely drop the IR remote, so this makes me think there are some changes to come before the final release.

ps3 top view

The PS3 handles its cooling perforation much more elegantly than the 360, with a nice square gradient on the top instead of the round Apple like cheese graters slapped on the XBox all over the place. I generally prefer round holes, but that's only because I have this belief that square ones allow cracks to propagate across the grid really easily. Maybe I've just seen too many caved in CRT monitor cases.

There are two other small things that need to be mentioned about the case before we move on to the controller. The printed text and graphics near the CD slot are what we expect from Sony; illustrator path graphics, the traditional Sony logo, and the PlayStation logo, but the PLAYSTATION 3 text stretched across the face is too "Spiderman." The old abstract PS2 and PSP graphic was great and unified the whole line. Hopefully this will be remedied in the final release. Lastly, the standing side view of the unit is a little bland. It would have been nice if the cambered surface was sitting a few millimeters off the ground, so there was a bit of a cast shadow there. Right now it's heavy, like a Brita water pitcher, while it could be hovering slightly, adding mystery and elegance.

ps controllers

So onto the banana, I mean controller. Yeah I hate this thing. Maybe it'll fly in Japan (Look out where you throw it though, it's liable to come back at you!) where electronics are a bit more sleek and sports car, but I have always loved the original dual shock controller. There are so many hidden niceties in there: it rest flat on a table top, its underside is curved to nestle over your thigh, the controls are both symmetrical and ergonomic, and every control is accessible and usable unlike most new Nintendo controllers. This new thing looks slippery and wide. It's also poorly defined, like a melted piece of wax, with no elegant edges like the new 360 controller, which is soft, but has a shape. The interface is nothing new, it's exactly the same buttons and arrangement, why change it if it's just gonna be yucky. And speaking of yucky, I really dislike the pastel silver and over all muting of the thing. Sony, throw this thing back where ever you found it!

Lastly, it's the most humble,
and fun system - the Nintendo Revolution revolution 3/4 view

The revolution got announced at E3 just like the PS3, but that's just to stay in the running. They've said publicly that they are not going to play the teraflops game with Sony and Microsoft, but concentrate more on content. Also, this system is way early in the development stages. It's not going to be released until 2006 which means Christmas 2006, a full year after the other 2 systems. Some people might say that this will be a deathblow for Nintendo, but I disagree. The other systems are going for a whole other market. Some price estimates are between three and seven hundred bucks. Nintendo is really meant to be a toy, for kids, not some massive convergence product. This is why I'm so hopeful for the Revolution. Nintendo games are all about fantasy, and cartoons, and you can already render that cell shaded style of animation on the game cube fairly well. Splinter Cell type realism is not appropriate for the next Pokemon stadium game. I don't want to see Ash’s acne, or the gushing head wound Pikachu inflicts on Squirtle, that would just be so wrong.

revolution front

Nintendo is about casual fun, and that's why it is going to dominate the portable market for years to come. It is possible that they will go software only as cell phone type convergence devices make carrying a clunky game only gizmo unreasonable, but they also might build up the feature set of the Nintendo DS to match those of the cell phone converg-ies.

revolution open

Now because of how early these images are, we have to take them with a grain of salt. The photos are of an empty, heavily PhotoShop re-touched, prototype shell, and no mention of the controller. But that being said, it is the hottest of the consoles presented. It's a simple black slab, canted at an angle with a mysterious glowing blue optical drive slot. The front is exquisite, a glowing blue bar, power, reset, and eject buttons, a small logo, and what might be a door to extra ports, or an expansion slot. The controller and memory card slots are on the left side of the unit behind a flush mounted door. Are these for re-charging wireless remotes and will the door be able to close with the memory cards inserted? Hopefully yes, because I don't want to have wires draped all over the place and an ugly door sticking up all the time. It shouldn't be beautiful only when you're not using it.

Nintendo's recent styling has, for most of us, been either elegant and blocky, or soft and slightly ill-defined. My boss provided some insight into this trend. From observing his eleven year old boy, he believes that the younger generation like simplicity in its products because it affords them an opportunity for personal customization. May it be the Scion XB, or the Nintendo DS, kids love stickers. They've grown up with the web, and while we're fairly content to use a blog's standard look, they tear into the HTML and tweak the hell out of it. From skinning Win-Amp to bolting on some killer ground effect neon, it's all about taking something simple and cheap and making it their own.

In addition to their console, Nintendo announced the petite GameBoy Micro, which looks like a real product coming soon to a store near you. This little sucker is about the size of an IPod mini ( weird to relate something mini to another mini thing ) that will play GameBoy Advance games on a microscopic, full color, back-lit screen. It seems to be a perfect miniaturization of the GameBoy Advance, just a power switch, headphone jack, directional pad, A, B, Start, Select, and shoulder buttons. And a screen of course, if you can call it that. The Start and Select buttons are poorly placed, only because that's where the unit will be resting on your nose, so you can see anything at all. Seriously, the whole thing is only 2 inches tall, meaning the screen is the size of a large postage stamp. Aargh! For something so temptingly cool, I don't think it's gonna work. But that doesn't mean it won't sell. It's got enormous retro hipster value - I mean how long before this thing gets turned into a belt buckle on hackaday?

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