Business, Console, Gamer Culture, PC, Xbox 360
Game Room brings retro back to Xbox 360: What it means for the rest of us
CES just ended this past weekend, and putting aside all the 3D movies, Blu-ray news, and Project Natal stories, Microsoft announced one more place where its Xbox Avatars will have something to do. The new Xbox Game Room will be a free virtual room for Live players to customize, decorate and deck out with Avatar-playable arcade cabinets of yesteryears.
What’s the big deal?
These older-gen retro arcade games will be preserved to play and look almost exactly as they did back in their hey-days. We will be charged Microsoft Points for plays beyond our second time, and more to “keep” the cabinet in our own virtual Game Rooms. Games for Windows will enable these to be played on PCs.
The key to every video game console is how the player is able to interact with it. This makes the controller design a crucial factor in a console’s hardware development. Brilliant designs such as Sony’s DualShock have proven that they can carry themselves across generations of platforms. However, most other companies have not been so lucky. Here are the five biggest design failures…