Tag Archives: microsoft

Like watching a trainwreck with a truck full of puppies plunging off a cliff

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Jon Blow’s recent blog post grabs excerpts Jeff Roberts and Casey Muratori (of Molly Rocket and the appropriately named Jeff and Casey Show) ripping into Microsoft on Visual Studio 2010 and the new Direct2D API. Both of these rants are worth a listen if for nothing else because Jeff and Casey are often times very, very funny guys to listen to even when you’re disagreeing with them.

And regardless of one’s views, something like this for the basic task of ultimately drawing a few simple objects is immensely intimidating code to be thrown into. I don’t envy the jobs of Microsoft programmers tasked with creating a new API with all the requirements Direct2D necessitated, but at the same time you sometimes wonder if they lost sight of the forest for the tree.

The amazing generic avatar

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Yesterday, Microsoft’s big Xbox 360 update, dubbed the New Xbox Experience (or informally the NXE) was released to the wide public after being hyped up for the better part of the second half of the year. It brings a host of improvements and new features that don’t need to be discussed here.

One of the biggest new features in the introduction of avatars, lovable cute little representations of ourselves. No longer the sole domain of Nintendo and their Miis, Microsoft saw fit to jump on that bandwagon with their own flavor of avatars. And its non-optional, one of the first things you’re prompted to do after you install NXE on your 360 is create at least one avatar representing yourself.

For the most part, the 360 avatars follow the fairly standard script created by Nintendo. Curiously enough, you’re not asked to choose a gender when representing your avatar, but you can choose from a small range of templates (evenly divided into male and female virtual representations) and then modify from there. The typical facial features like eyes, nose, hair, and ears can be altered. Going even farther then what Nintendo provides, you can play dress up with your avatar and choose from a fairly limited selection of clothing.

But that’s about as interesting as it gets. Even though Microsoft has had a full 2 years to copy Nintendo’s Mii interface and process, the NXE avatars don’t come anywhere near as close to the variety of things you can create with the Miis. Forget doing something like Zoidberg or Vulcans here, you’ll be lucky enough to get something that moderately resembles you. The facials features are relatively limited, there’s not a large number of different body parts to use and even more curiously you have no control over their placement and size. So if you have a huge forehead or big nose, good luck accurately trying to replicate that with your avatars. In the end they all resemble people who vaguely look like you which is a far cry from some of the more creative Miis out there.

The other design decision that hurts avatars is that their key differentiating factor, clothing, is severly hampered by Microsoft’s decision to make clothing purchasable on the Xbox Live stores. Clothing right now can’t be modified in any meaningful fashion, no choosing a t-shirt and then choosing the color or anything like that. It screams of “buy more clothes when they’re on sale!”.

But really, all this fuss may be over nothing. Avatars right now are almost entirely superfluous. A large part of the success of Miis comes from how tightly integrated they are into just about all of Nintendo’s casual and expanded audience lineup. Even in games where Miis aren’t necessarily used like Mario Kart you’ll find them littering the grandstands and roadsides. Right now, only a few games use avatars (most of them casual Xbox Live Arcade games). While we can expect Microsoft to heavily push avatar use in future titles, right now there’s not much need for them at all.

Unpacking the game

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As a kid I was incredibly anal about handling the packaging my games came in. Growing up before there were CD/DVD cases most games — in particular anything for a Nintendo system — were packaged in relatively flimsy cardboard boxes. I took great pains to carefully remove the tape sealing the box; making sure to avoid tearing any of the package along with it. I even made sure to open the box in a gentle way to prevent creasing in the thin cardboard. Opening the game was a ritual of sorts, acquiring a new game was a relative rarity as a child and I made sure to savor every step of the process. Delaying the time until I could jam the cartridge into my console through meticulous unpacking was part of the experience.

As this and many similar stories can attest: packaging matters. It’s often the very first way people are informed about any product (including games). It’s why companies like Apple spend inordinate amounts of time and attention to simple details like the texture of the box. Apple’s packaging is so good that it is not uncommon for people to use it as decoration.

But even the fervor of Mac fans could probably not hold a candle to the nostalgia associated with videogame packaging. Today modern game packaging is at best perfunctory and at times now nonexistent. But games from yesteryear took great care in making sure the box wasn’t a just another barrier to the game, but a potent experience by itself.

The empty plastic bag is a microscopic space fleet

No where was this more evident in the lengths adventure game companies back in the 1980s went through. Partially to compensate for the low-fidelity of the text games themselves and partially to invoke the first steps in universe building, companies went the extra mile in jamming boxes and other unusual containers with maps, hidden messages, and other treats. Infocom became legendary for the amount and creativity of their trinkets. Loving dubbed “feelies” they included items such as a “magick glowing stone” for Wishbringer or “peril sensitive sunglasses” for The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (a pair of shades with no eye holes). The entire packaging history of Infocom can be seen at this amazing tribute gallery.

But the unique packaging of games from publishers like Infocom or Origin are now obsolete. Original packaging is expensive to manufacture and cumbersome for warehouses and stores to handle. The demands of shelf space are now at a premium with the death of smaller game stores in lieu of big box retailers. And the truth is that most consumers simply can’t be bothered to care about anything inside a box besides the game. Even the manual has become superfluous as most companies have gone from color to black–and–white to a single sheet of instructions along with a website address.

Microsoft is among the worst offenders in this decline of game packaging. Microsoft in any of their marketing efforts has always lagged behind standard bearers (as famously mocked in-house) and their Xbox–related efforts have not shown much improvement. Even when dealing with things that should be relatively standard Microsoft has managed to screw up. First was the Halo 3 Collector’s Edition tin which had such flimsy design that the DVD was more likely to not be in place upon opening then it was to be in place. And now we have this.

Not my picture, not my copy

Yes, you are seeing right. Lost Odyssey is a monster of a game weighing in at 4 DVDs necessary for all that high–definition video and music. But Microsoft’s North American division has perhaps gone the laziest of all possible routes to fitting every disc into the case. That’s three stacked DVDs on top of each other in the spindle. And to top it off you have the fourth DVD in a paper sleeve on the side. It screams cheap especially when our European brethren at least got a proper 4–DVD case.

Again, packaging is important because first impressions are important. Your first thought when opening this monstrosity isn’t a positive one. You’re left thinking, “Who the hell thought of this?” Even in this era of disposable boxes and cases I like to think that consumers still care about the little details. If we didn’t why people complain about terrible box art? It’s hyperbole to call the case for Lost Odyssey a disgrace. But it leaves an impression and in a world where people can be turned off products for the most minuscule of reasons it seems a bit thoughtless for a corporation like Microsoft to let this slip.