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The Story Behind New Xbox DesignsMicrosoft's Xbox team was sure of one thing when it set out to design a new console: If the system won the approval of Japanese consumers, then others would love it as well.
The goal sounded simple enough, but it was something Microsoft had failed at before. The company has sold only 1.7 million original Xbox consoles in Japan, where gamers deplored the system as too brash and bulky.
"You couldn't get it through the door of apartments in a lot of places," joked Peter Moore, a corporate vice president in the Xbox division.
Microsoft also wanted its new console, which it named the Xbox 360, to become a part of home-entertainment systems around the world.
To do that, it had to appeal to nongamers: the wives who rolled their eyes at their husbands' expensive toy, the mothers who had banished their child's Xbox to the basement TV.
The company won't know if it succeeded until after the Xbox 360 goes on sale in November. Microsoft unveiled the console last week and will give more news about the console today at its briefing at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in Los Angeles.
Design can play as big a role as technology in consumer electronics these days, particularly when everything else about a product is standardized. Telephones pretty much work the same, for example, but are set apart by the way they lo
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May 18, 2005 | Viewed 18,501 time(s)
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