Gamecloud

For our final report from this week's Xbox 360 press event that we attended in New York City, we will concentrate on the Xbox console itself. There were a few consoles that were not being used for playing games so we decided just to pick one up and take a look at it. Most of you likely have only seen the Xbox 360 in videos or pictures so it may surprise you that the console is only a little smaller than the original Xbox. Yes you can place it vertically as well as on its side but we thought that Microsoft might want to make the design even smaller for the Japanese market. One of the things Microsoft is hyping is the interchangable face-plates for the Xbox 360. Microsoft reps told us that they plan to sell a number of faceplates for the console at $20 each. For some reason only a couple of the Xbox 360 controllers at the event were of the wireless model. Most of the controllers were of the wired variety that will come with the cheaper $299 Xbox 360 model. The white controller is smaller than the standard Xbox black version and we found it quite confortable to use in our many hours of playing through the Xbox 360 beta units. The new controller does away with the original's white and black buttons (which a lot of game developers didn't even use anyway) but does add secondary left and right triggers above the main triggers and a silver button in the center top that looks like the Xbox 360 logo. This button is used to bring up the Xbox 360 dashboard.

While the hardware specs for the Xbox 360 and how they compare to the upcoming Playstation 3 can and most likely will be debated for months to come, no one can dispute the fact that Microsoft has made the console interface for their new console easy to use. As we mentioned in the first part of our report, the dashboard is separated into several "blades" that the user can flip through a little like a book to represent games, media, Xbox Live, options and more. Since their Xbox Live service is now almost three years old, it makes sense that Microsoft wants to take it to the next level. The $399 version of the Xbox 360 (the version that will most likely be sold the most during the launch window next month) will have the free Xbox Live Silver service built in so people who perhaps owned an Xbox but never used the Xbox Live service will be able to jump in with a kind of trial version. The menus and options that you will have for Xbox Live are very intuitive and even colorful, unlike the neon green display for the original Xbox.

One of the things we are really excited about for the Xbox 360 is the console's version of Xbox Live Arcade. Microsoft only launched the Arcade portion of Xbox Live less than a year ago, two years after Xbox Live itself launched. The idea of having classic games that you can download and buy via Xbox Live is appealing not only to gamers but also to developers that can perhaps make a game for the Xbox 360 but don't have the resources to do a full blown AAA console titles. For the Xbox 360 launch, Microsoft intends to have quite a few games for the sevice, including some Xbox 360 exclusives. One is Hexic HD, a game from the creators of Tetrix that will be included as a free game when you either buy the Xbox 360 hard drive or get the $399 Xbox 360 system. We were told by Microsoft reps that they are getting tons of submissions for adding games for the Xbox Live Arcade service but they are being fairly choosy over which ones they select (they don't want, say, five different Hearts games for the service). 60 percent of an Xbox Live Arcade's revenue will go back to the developer if they created the game themselves, we were told, while games which Microsoft had a hand in making will have more going back to Microsoft. One neat thing is that you should be able to put several Xbox Live Arcade games on one Xbox 360 memory card. You can take that card to a friend's house and play those games on his Xbox 360. After you leave you can leave free demo versions of those games for your friend to play and, later, purchase on his or her own.

Microsoft tried to make the original Xbox a media machine with add-ons like the music maker but for the Xbox 360 media sharing with PCs and USB devices will be built in. Microsoft used a iPod Nano player to demonstrate how easy it was to link up media devices to the Xbox 360. MP3 players, the newer video players like the new video iPod, and more will work seemlessly. Microsoft also showed off the new Xbox 360 headset (a lot more comforable to wear than the original Xbox headset) and two versions of its DVD controller. One was smaller and fairly basic in controls while the other was twice as long and seemed to have a lot more functions built it.

Microsoft is still being cagy on exactly how many Xbox 360 units will really be on sale when it launches in the US on Nov. 22. The reps we talked to at the event would not talk specifics, nor did they talk about exactly how many titles will be for sale for the console at launch day. They were equally quiet about what original Xbox games will be backwards compatible with the Xbox 360 (which will need the hard drive installed to make that work). The launch of the console is still over a month away but there are still a lot of concrete facts that are currently unknown. Hopefully those announcements will be made soon and we should have a better idea of what the actual launch of the Xbox 360 will be like. At the moment it looks like things are going about as expected for the launch of the first next-gen console of this cycle and we look forward to getting more info about the launch before Nov. 22.