Japanese Gamers Guide Microsoft's New Xbox Design

Japanese Gamers Guide Microsofts New Xbox Design
Microsoft'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 gamers elsewhere 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.

To make its next Xbox -- to be called the Xbox 360 -- a part of home-entertainment systems around the world, Microsoft had to appeal to nongamers: the wives who rolled their eyes at their husbands' expensive toy, the grandparents who banished their granddaughter's Xbox to the basement.

Did Microsoft succeed? Consumers will decide this fall, when the Xbox 360 becomes the first of a new generation of full-sized gaming consoles to go on sale.

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 look.

Microsoft knew that if the Xbox 360 was to be seen as on par technology-wise with other next-generation consoles, its appearance would matter too.

This was new territory for Microsoft.

Software was its forte, not design. So the company poured