Wildchicken: Blog

Pelago.com

Fri, 13 Jul 2007 02:55:02 GMT

I've updated my new company's website and it went live today! www.pelago.com. We're still in stealth mode so there's not a lot of detail about our product development stuff, but we're getting closer!

The new site was something I was doing this past week in parallel with our product design and development. A few weeks ago I redesigned our logo, and now here it is unveiled with a new site to wrap it up in. Check it out! I haven't done logo design in a while, and I went through quite a number of iterations to get here. Had to think about company values, branding, design values, culture, etc. before starting on actually designing it. It was fun, though. One of these days, just for my own portfolio, I'm going to document that process for myself and see the journey of the Pelago logo. I'm happy with how it turned out.

The site itself went in fits and starts, but once I was able to sit down for a couple hours solid I was able to establish a basic design direction which I was able to follow. It's a little light on content, but that's what happens when you're a startup in stealth mode. I can't wait to actually be able to talk about our work! Then the website can show more - but then that requires a lot more design work to get it there. Oh well.

We also did a little co-development with American Eagle, so you can see our little logo on their site. Go to ae.com and pick out something. If you click on Send to Phone, you can see our little logo at the bottom. Nothing obtrusive or super fancy, but we're getting out there.

BTW, we are hiring. Check out the jobs page. :-)

Not iYet

Thu, 05 Jul 2007 18:53:12 GMT

Got my hands on a iPhone here at work, and after spending a couple days with it I have to say: not yet.

Don't get me wrong, it's beautiful and lust-inducing. It's a gorgeous device, and has "steal me" written all over it. They did an amazing number of things just so right, and obviously had to get a service partner to change the status quo because it was the right thing to do. Visual voicemail? Threaded SMS? C'mon, now there's no other way to do it, and because the iPhone did it the other phones and carriers will have to get with it or get left behind.

Initially the onscreen keyboard wasn't quite as good as I hoped; it kept on getting P when I wanted O. But after using it more, I realized it's pretty damn good, just not as good as a dedicated keyboard quite yet. I'm still using my Blackjack (but that's quite an imperfect device as well). I'm surprised that they didn't have the keyboard actually show lower-case letters, especially when typing in passwords. I found myself wondering what I was typing, and the glowing shift button just didn't seem enough for me.

The kicker right now is that I have a couple pairs of good headphones - a Bose noise canceling pair for traveling and general sitting-on-my-butt use, and a Shure pair for taking around with me. Neither of them will fit on the iPhone, since the iPhone's jack is recessed and the plugs simply won't fit! I know, get a dongle that will do it, but why the hell should I spend another few dollars for a crappy solution like that?

I know, everyone's going to come out with an iPhone friendly design, but I'm perfectly happy with my existing headphones and I can't believe that I can't use them as is.

However I wouldn't be surprised if Bose released a new cable for their headphones that also include the microphone. Now that would be slick. However most other headphones don't have that option, and it sucks that you would have to use a stupid dongle (which I'm not sure is even out) or use their headphones only.

For the same price as a PS3, I don't want to have to make that choice quite yet.

Yeah, yeah, it's a great device, it's signature Apple, and they have a lot to be proud of and everyone else needs to stand up and take notice. But I think I'll wait a little while longer. Unfortunately for me, it's likely not a matter of if, but when.

Spider-Man 3: Crap

Mon, 07 May 2007 02:19:26 GMT

Like too many other cattle looking for entertainment this past weekend, I went with some friends to go to Spider-Man 3. Boy, was that a mistake. A lot of people seem to be charitable saying that the movie, despite its flaws, was entertaining. I can't even say that much. I was close to walking out of the movie a handful of times, and it takes a lot for me to do that.

The script was horrendous and, in general, delivered poorly by the principals. The plot was held together by day-old chewing gum. The special effects were, admittedly, quite special, but the moviemakers forgot something: a great story! I couldn't believe that this, likely to be the biggest box office hit of this year, was a disappointment on so many levels. Weak story? Check. Crappy script? Check. Actors with no on-screen chemistry? Check. Crap singing and dancing? Check. Incoherent plot? Check. Waste of time? Check.

I imagine the bulk of the $250 Million budget went towards the special effects, and they were quite good. However they only seemed to look for an excuse to use more special effects instead of focusing on the damn story! I was also disappointed by the opening credits, as I have come to expect from many movies to deliver a really cool opening or ending credits sequence. At the end of the day, it really makes it clear that no amount of special effects can replace a good script and story.

What was up with Tobey Maguire? I have a lot of respect for him as an actor, but he really just brought his B-game. Same with Kirsten Dunst. I couldn't bring myself to really empathize with either of their characters, so I didn't care what the hell happened to them! Bruce Campbell, playing a French maitre d', was genuinely entertaining. Topher Grace also seemed to pull his part together quite well. But I would have to place most of the blame on the script and the directing, as ultimately these actors could only do so much with what they were given.

If you haven't seen it, don't waste your time. If you absolutely must (just because everyone else seems to have seen it), catch a matinee and leave your brain in your car. You'll need it more on the ride back home.

Flying the Coop

Thu, 26 Apr 2007 03:10:36 GMT

Today I announced my pending departure from Microsoft, so I will no longer be an Xbox 360 or Zune insider, but someone who can experience it from the outside. I've had an amazing run there for almost 9 years: Xbox 360, Zune, Crimson Skies, The Beast, MechWarrior 4, and SQL Server 2000 & 7.0. I'm proud of the work I've done, but I look forward to what the team does moving forward. I get to be a consumer of Xbox 360 and Zune now!

It's extremely exciting for me to move to a new chapter in my professional life, but it's also sad to have to say goodbye to some great people. I will miss many of them, but I'm sure we'll be crossing paths again. The world is amazingly small when it comes to professional circles.

So what's next? I can't say. But once I can, I'll be posting it right here!

All for now...

Xbox 360 2007 Spring Update - It's the Small Things that Count

Sat, 14 Apr 2007 02:15:30 GMT

I'm out of the country so it's hard to make a real post on this, but the details of the upcoming Spring update have been released. I'm really excited about some of these, especially the "small" improvements like the Achievement notification, joinable presence icon, and the name of the game in the tray. Those things, in particular, were ones that a small group of people were very passionate about and did whatever they needed to make it happen. These were also something that we felt was very important to our customers. What do you think?

That's all for now until I'm back, at which point I'll spend a little more time talking about the user experience additions/improvements that's coming this Spring.

Sony Reader

Tue, 27 Mar 2007 01:44:24 GMT

I got one of these Sony Readers recently and I've been using it rather extensively for a couple weeks now. Don't get it confused with the original Easy Reader, as nothing is cooler than reading.

The Good:

You need to check out the screen. It has great DPI for a digital display, so text looks very good. If you didn't know any better, it looks like a fake display since it's very flat and doesn't glow which means you need light to read it, just like a real book. The screen, legibility, and overall cool factor is the best part of this; I'm reading 3 books on this right now, and I'm enjoying the experience. You can even change text size on the fly and bookmark pages to your heart's content. Battery life is great since electronic ink is very efficient.

It also seems to do a decent job of showing pictures in black & white. The resolution is good enough such that even with a limited number of grey levels the dithering does a great job of giving you a full range. You just need to make sure that your images are at a resolution that's close to the reader's native screen, otherwise pictures look like crap.

The Bad:

The interface, on the other hand, starts to get a little less cool both on the device software as well as the hardware itself. Why have 2 ways to page forward and backward? Why have the number keys along the bottom when the UI uses them in a list going from top to bottom? It may make more sense to put the numbers vertically to match up with the screen. The extremely slow refresh rate of the screen causes some problems if you're actually trying to use the d-pad to navigate the rudimentary UI. I wonder if they could have removed the need for a d-pad if they had better aligned the number keys along the side. I think they could have easily removed 6 buttons right there: remove the redundant paging buttons and the 4-way d-pad. It feels like such a lost opportunity to have a much better hardware/software experience that is really integrated.

When you really think about it, the industrial design overall isn't amazing. It's okay, but it's not quite there yet. Don't get me wrong, Sony tends to have solid industrial design, but for some reason this one didn't quite meet my expectations.

The Ugly:

Where it gets really ugly is the Sony Connect software. You need to use their software and their store to get books, and frankly it sucks. They try to be a little like iTunes and software of that nature, but they fail completely. It has neither the catalog of Amazon or the integrated library/catalog interface of an Tunes or Zune. On top of that, you can download the software to your PC, but you can't create an account unless you have a reader! Why would they prevent someone from checking out the store that way and even prevent them from buying books? What if they wanted to read them on their laptop? Anyway, it makes no sense. The PC software is horrendously bad, enough so that I really don't like browsing for books. I go to the bookstore or Amazon, write down the titles of books that I want, check the Connect store if they have it, and if they do then maybe I'll buy it. Horrible.

And to my earlier point about pictures looking like crap if they weren't in the right resolution, why can't the software either automatically change them when I'm synching or at least tell me that they need to be in a particular size?

Some books have footnotes/endnotes that you can actually go to, but the navigation gets so weird that I've found that I've lost my place by following one. Such a shame.

I don't read product manuals so maybe there is a way to do these things but I just don't know how. Then again, for consumer products I really don't think it should be necessary to read manuals in the first place.

Summary:

I would love to see future readers fix all of these things with the device and the connect store to either get with the program or we get a standard e-book format that I can download from Amazon and synch with my device. I can bring .doc and .pdf files with me, and I honestly haven't tried to do that yet, but it's not quite the same as getting the latest releases from Amazon or the bookstore. Getting me off of the Connect software/store would make this experience sooo much better.

All in all, if you like gadgets and want to take reading to the next step, give this a shot. It's not cheap (US$349.99), but if there are enough titles in the Connect catalog to keep you happy, not having to lug around books when you travel is a nice feature that your back/shoulders would be happy about. I think electronic ink is a really cool technology that we're going to see used more in the future, and when you get beyond the crappy store and PC software, get used to the klunky device interface, and you're just reading through George Orwell's 1984, it's almost like you've seen the future of books. Almost.

Design Rant of the Day

Thu, 15 Mar 2007 19:06:27 GMT

Why do socks need to have their own size? Who knows what their sock size is? Every single sock label has the shoe size on it which is much more useful anyway.

Chinese In-Laws

Mon, 19 Feb 2007 07:14:22 GMT

My wife, who's Chinese, pointed this blog posting out to me. I had to share it with the rest of you.

I have Chinese in-laws, and I have a lot of friends who are either Chinese or similarly related as I am. There are some great observations here that really do hit very close to home. Thankfully it's my wife who pointed this out to me so I'm not risking being in the doghouse for laughing about it.

With my in-laws, what I hear most is "eat this." This isn't quite like what rude Americans would say with a nice hand gesture, but it's told simply and with real concern for my well-being as I'm apparently in need of constant sustenance. It's usually followed by "it's good for healthy!" Since English is their 3rd or 4th language, and my Mandarin is very remedial and Cantonese non-existent, conversations are not as natural as we would like. This doesn't keep my mother-in-law from talking to everyone. Loudly. What makes this more amusing is when I say something back, she will often misinterpret what I'm saying and repeat part of what I said with a look of surprise, akin to the expression you might see on someone's face when you tell them you just ran over their puppy.

Me: Ma, would you like some water?

Ma: Water, where?! Oh my god!

Spring Festival

Sun, 18 Feb 2007 08:00:06 GMT

It is Chinese New Year, and it's the year of the boar! It's too bad that my trip out to Beijing wasn't a couple weeks later - it would have been something to be there for this holiday. My in-laws wish we could spend this holiday with them, but unfortunately the US doesn't celebrate this as an official holiday, so we don't get any days off as part of the regular schedule. I really need to make good on that soon, though - it would make them and my wife quite happy.

Banned Word: Emboldened

Sat, 17 Feb 2007 10:33:46 GMT

I don't watch a lot of TV. I am currently watching Rome on HBO, and I opportunistically watch other shows that my wife watches, like Scrubs. Recently, I've caught the last 2-3 episodes of Heroes. Then I try to catch the news in the morning when I'm getting ready for work and in the evenings as we're winding down. I don't want to hear the word emboldened every time I watch the news.

I've heard it too often that it has lost its meaning. Politicians and their speechwriters should be asked to come up with their own explanation of what they're trying to say instead of latching on to the latest political meme.

If I were a speechwriter, I should be fined 5% of my pay every time I used the word "emboldened" in a speech. There are so many other words in the English language that are more interesting. Here are a handful from reference.com: Pollyannaish, blithe, rose-colored, upbeat.

Wouldn't you actually prefer to hear this?

"Our actions will cause our enemies to be Pollyannaish."

Say That Again

Sat, 13 Jan 2007 22:13:06 GMT

Ars Technica has a nice little article on the latest.

In his CES keynote, Peter Dille (SCEA's SVP of Marketing) stated that that Motorstorm will run 1080p at 60fps. Apparently this is not true, as SCEA told 1UP that it will actually be 720p at 30fps.

In that same keynote, he says they hit their goal of shipping 1 million PS3 systems. Hold on for a sec. Back in August, Sony clarified their launch plans saying they would have 2 million at launch and another 2 million by year's end, for a total of 4 million. In November, that number went down to a total of 2 million according to an Engadget interview with Peter Dille. And now 1 million? It's neat that it goes down by half every time.

It's amazing that they continue to say these kinds of things week after week. If Microsoft were caught making those types of statements, we would be publicly tarred and feathered.

Happy Belated New Year

Sat, 13 Jan 2007 03:15:38 GMT

It's been a while, so here's a short update on what's happened since the end of November:

Lots of work on Xbox 360 updates for 2007 and beyond.
Flew to my alma mater, Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, to attend an end-of-semester project review and meet with faculty & students from the design department and the Entertainment Technology Center.
Got snowed in. Took 6 hours to get home on what is normally a 40 minute commute.
Went on vacation and visited family.
Played some games: Gears of War, Rainbow Six Vegas, Wii Sports, Elebits, and Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime.
Went back to work. My laptop died on me. It's one of those small Sony VAIO's, and the hard drive seems to be having problems. It's stuck in an endless reboot loop. I'm replacing it.
Bought a Samsung Blackjack since I needed a full-fledged email capable handheld with my laptop DOA.
Flew to Vegas for CES 2007. Staffed the Zune booth and lounge. Ate the best meal I've had in a looong time at Nobu in the Hard Rock Hotel. We announced some cool things, like IPTV on Xbox 360.
Flew back to another snowstorm.

Hope everyone had some time off for the holidays. I'll expand on a bunch of the things above when I get a chance. Maybe when I have a working laptop.

My Review of Gears of War

Thu, 30 Nov 2006 01:21:20 GMT

Like a lot of people, I've been playing Gears of War on my 360. Since its release I've played a a few ranked games with strangers and quite a few more games with friends. I've also finished the campaign on Hardcore difficulty. I've had an amazing amount of fun playing this game and I haven't been this motivated to sign into Xbox Live in a long time.

The Good

The game looks amazing. It's likely the best looking game out there to date, all existing Xbox 360 and PS3 games included. It's a little monochromatic for my tastes, but I think the color palette helps them achieve both the fidelity and look they were going for. The character models, both Cog and Locust, are extremely well done. The environments are rich and surprisingly varied, from the various city locations, underground caves, mansions, and trains. If you've got a high-def TV, you owe it to yourself to put this game in and experience it.

The sound is well done, but the speech could have had their levels tweaked a little more. There were definitely some parts where it would have been impossible to understand if I didn't have subtitles on, and that's already with the in-game music turned down a little. It could simply be an artifact of my setup, but then again it's not an uncommon problem in these games. The dialogue is a little frat-boy and meatheaded, but it's actually pretty appropriate for the genre. Unfortunately if the dialogue were in a movie, it would be a B movie and somehow not appropriate for this season's first true AAA title. But it does its job by giving you a little wit, albeit it's a little light on actually moving the story along or giving you some more background information on the conflict. The voices themselves are pretty good, and I personally love the the Locust antagonist voice that sounds a little like Dame Judi Dench. Jack, the floating droid, sounds way too much like R2D2.

The campaign has 3 difficulty levels with the most difficult, Insane, being unlocked once you complete the campaign in another level first. Personally I hate it when games do this - I would prefer that they're all available and let the user choose how they want to play it. With that out of the way, I have to say I love the fact that you can play through the campaign alone or cooperatively via split screen or on Live. I don't remember if you can do it over system link. The ability to drop in anytime via Live is awesome. The full campaign is a little on the short side, but I really don't mind since I don't have a lot of time to invest in a long, drawn-out campaign; however I would concede that I'm probably in the minority here as most people, especially worldwide, would prefer their games these days to have a campaign that's at least 15+ hours. Generally I spend a significant amount of my time playing multiplayer, and with GOW that's no exception. However there are a lot of people out there who are all about the single player campaign, and if that's you, it might be a bit short unless you decide to do everything in campaign, including playing it through in Insane after you unlock it. They have also inserted a collection game within the campaign, where you find 30 Cog tags (military dogtags) scattered throughout the game. You get 3 Achievements for doing this, one each for getting 1/3, 2/3, and all 30. It's pretty fun to find them, and in my run through I got 21. I'm actually motivated to go through it again on Insane and find the remaining 9. Curse this Achievement and Gamerscore system! Maybe I'll need to get a friend to go through it with me since Hardcore can get pretty difficult. I found that the difficulty across the game isn't very consistent, but it's manageable. Oddly I found myself breezing through a couple of the boss fights but die repeatedly in some of the intermittent firefights.

Multiplayer is very fun once you get pretty balanced teams. There's a nice variety of maps, and like many shooters there are immediate chokepoints on all of them, usually based on weapon pickup locations. It's a little confusing sometimes that most of the maps are essentially completely symmetrical, as calling out locations to your teammates becomes more difficult unless you have all memorized the maps. At any rate, once you're in a game, it's great fun and you can lose a couple hours easily doing this. It is extremely satisfying when you get your kills in this game, especially if it involves the chainsaw, grenade tagging, or headshots. Being on the receiving end is appropriately unsatisfying, as you have to wait until the next round as a voyeur chatting with the rest of the unfortunate dead.

The reload mechanic is awesome. Like most shooters, you can press a button to reload your weapon. In GOW, when you reload you get a progress bar below the bullet display. You can just wait for this to complete to get your reload, or you could press the reload button again when the reload bar is within a smaller highlighted area on this bar - it's a mini rhythm game. Doing this right gets you a quicker reload and some bullets with additional damage, whereas missing this area results in a longer reload time and your character cursing. It's a great new mechanic that every shooter from this point onward should consider, in my opinion.

Cliffy B's been promoting this "stop 'n pop" gameplay versus "run 'n gun", and he's achieved it. Going in with guns blazing will get you and your teammates killed, whether in campaign or multiplayer. Getting some cover is the only way to win. The controls are tight, and it won't take anyone who has even played an FPS on a console much time to get used to it. In Gears, you use the A button for all movement-related actions. The "roadie run" is great - you hunch down and run if you hold down the A button and push forward. Your steering is reduced, so it's this great balance of speed vs. precision and you get this cool jittery camera effect. That effect has come close to giving me motion sickness, BTW. Anyway, you also press the A button to hide behind objects in the game and get some needed cover. It makes movement simpler to manage, but with a caveat (as I'll explain below).

Controlling your character gives you a great sense of weight - you look and feel like a badass soldier. Seeing yourself carrying the weapons you're supposed to have looks and feels right. On that note, the weapons are great. Your basic rifle with chainsaw bayonet and shotgun are already among the best weapons in the game. You have your standard sniper rifle and rocket launcher ("boomshot"). The fun really starts with the Hammer of Dawn, a powerful satellite-based weapon with a long charge time but gruesome results, and the Torque Bow which requires some practice but rewards your efforts greatly. Oh, the joy.

The Bad

There are a few things I really don't like. First, as you can imagine, is the user interface. Changing your options is a confusing process. An example is changing your Y-axis from default to invert. You need to select Options from the game's main menu or from the in-game pause menu. From there you select Xbox 360 Controller which has six options, the first one being Y Axis. You need to push left or right to change the selected option, then press A to accept which takes you back to the previous screen. Pressing B instead takes you back to the previous screen as well without making changes. Either way, you can't really tell what you did, and I found myself (and others when playing system link games) going back to check. They could have made this much easier by putting a button at the bottom of this menu that said "Accept". I think that picking a scuffed up typewriter font makes their UI harder to use as you don't easily read some of the helpful UI text that they're trying to provide.

Setting up a multiplayer game is annoying as heck. For example, to select a map to play on you have a horizontal spinner that cycles through the available maps. One option is Custom Cycle, but then you need to press the Y button to go to a different screen to select which maps you want and in what order. Once you get to that screen, it's another confusing UI to do all that. Oh, and one last thing - the UI forces even teams. You join a lobby, and you're in the middle between the Cog and Locust team columns. You go left or right depending which team you want to join. However, if there is one person in the lobby with you and they're on the Cog column, you can't join them in their team until at least one person is in the Locust column. But until someone selects a team, you don't know who's in the lobby, so getting teams in order can be annoying. Especially if that particular session gets hit by the bug where one or more people can't speak to anyone else or there's this horrible echo that makes all speech unintelligible. I hope that the voice bugs get tracked down and fixed in a future update.

I don't like how "sticky" you are with your environment. It's very common to stick to walls when you don't want to. This is most annoying when you're in a firefight and you're trying to get out of the way. Pressing A and pushing in any direction makes you roll that way, helpful to get out of the line of fire. Unfortunately, you can try to be doing this and inadvertently push against a wall. Before you know it, you're stuck against a wall being peppered with bullets instead of rolling out of the way. I wish that they could have tuned the behavior such that if the player is pulling back (down) on the left stick (and maybe 45 degrees either side) and pressing A, it will always result in a roll; if there's a wall in the way, you just roll as far as you can go but you still don't stick. That way when you're moving back or away, you are less likely to stick to something you didn't want to or didn't even see. It's like your body armor has Velcro hooks and the environment has loops. Or vice-versa. At any rate, you stick even when you don't want to.

Last thing is back to multiplayer. One of the best reasons why Halo 2 has the online popularity it continues to have for over 2 years is its robust matchmaking system, enabling individuals and groups to play pick up games or stay with a group and change the game to their hearts' content. In Gears, once you've set up a game, you can't change any options without quitting! Bungie really set the bar for console games here, and unfortunately GOW didn't meet that. It doesn't seem to be hurting the current popularity of GOW on Xbox Live today, but without it I don't know if it will have the long-term playability online. In addition, I don't like the fact that there are only 3 game types in GOW: Execution, Warzone, and Assassination. Each one is just a variation on killing the other team. There are simply no objective-based game types that have become a staple for shooters, like CTF, territories, etc. Again, Halo 2 set the bar for being able to tweak the game every which way, and it's disappointing not to get anything close to that with Gears. Don't get me wrong, I love playing Execution, but I sorely miss a great game of CTF. I hope that Epic provides updates in the future that not only provides new maps, but new gametypes and an improved matchmaking system.

Summary

I think Gears of War is a great game and one that arms the Xbox 360 extremely well in the next-gen console wars which has finally and truly begun. You can't get a gaming experience quite like it anywhere else, and I expect that it will finally give some fence-sitters the reason they've been looking for to pick up an Xbox 360. The UI and stickiness issues are, at the end of the day, annoyances which won't hurt the game's long term playability. The multiplayer matchmaking and game types, on the other hand, will keep GOW from being as fresh and fun today as it can be in the following months or years. Here's to hoping that this gets addressed in a future update. It's rated M for Mature, so no one should complain about the violence and gore as it's clearly marked as being appropriate for those 17 and older. However, there's nothing that can keep me from recommending Gears of War as one of the best shooters out there today.

Rating: 9/10

Great Design and Agile Development

Tue, 21 Nov 2006 09:08:06 GMT

I was recently part of an internal panel here at Microsoft where we talked about the creation of user experiences for Agile development processes. We had some great discussions going, and I had a lot of fun having some public debates with various people. I'm not one to shy away from vigorous conversations - in fact, I kind of enjoy them. My wife thinks I should do something with that, like get a law degree or something. But I digress.

Here's my standpoint on Agile. I don't believe that Agile methods enable teams of people to produce world-class design for most types of software development projects, and that the various methods can't successfully scale very well to large ones. If you've got a product that is already well-defined in terms of branding, design principles, customers/users, and vision, Agile may work for you. However, I would argue that having all of those would already put you ahead no matter what process or methodology you use.

There's an assumption with Agile that a programmer's time is worth more than anyone else's. It does everything it can to reduce coding down time. Unfortunately this puts a tremendous amount of pressure on designers, program managers, testers, and everyone else in a multi-disciplinary team to scale up. In the case of user experience people, a friend on mine whose judgment I highly respect estimated that it would take about 2x to 2.5x the number of user experience resources to adjust successfully to Agile. This guy's a UX director at one of the world's largest software companies, and he's been around the industry for much longer than I have, and he's just an all-around smart, well-read guy. He's not one to exaggerate. One reason for this estimate is that many UX activities can be done serially, so a fewer number of people can do them and they roll from one thing to another. With Agile, you would need to do many of the same things in parallel, so you would need more people to do them.

Another person who is quite well-known in UX circles told me that UX folks can be successful by adjusting. He's had success with doing shorter, more targeted UX activities that could fit within the month-long Agile period. I don't disagree you could do some things well in this way. In some cases the reduced timeline could provide some necessary pressure to find efficiencies in a team's process. However I don't believe that you can be strategic when all you can do is think in one month cycles, especially if you're starting something big and brand new that requires a high level of design to be successful. Yes, you can be nimble and find ways around the problem. It's still a problem.

A number of people told me that Agile would help or has helped their teams overcome issues that they've had, like executive management not being in touch, devs not talking to PMs, testers being out of synch, etc. What that tells me, however, is that the team has a fundamental problem with their team culture, and without addressing that the team is doomed to fail. Now if a process can help the team change its culture, great. But simply following a process for process' sake isn't a recipe for success. Don't confuse culture with process.

At the end of the day, a team needs to have a culture that is design-led if they truly want to deliver world-class user experiences and products. I don't believe that Agile is a tool best suited to this task.

A friend of mine made this analogy. Communism, in theory, is good too. See how well that worked out. ;-)

Zune Launches

Wed, 15 Nov 2006 00:32:18 GMT

Just in case you haven't noticed the deluge of news about this, Zune launched today! If you're in the US, it should be widely available at retail (unless they sold out).

I Want It, and I Want It NOW!

Mon, 13 Nov 2006 19:58:04 GMT

I need to explain something to some people. There is apparently a misconception that something like an Xbox 360 update takes something like 3 days for us to design, develop, and test. Okay, maybe a week, tops.

Even though I would love to live in a world where something that complex can happen that quickly, that's not how it works. If any of you have ever been involved in large-scale product development, you know this. There are an amazing number of people with massive amounts of information producing work across dozens of disciplines, and sometimes it's a wonder how things even get done when they do.

I've gotten a bunch of comments that we didn't listen when we asked for feedback now that the fall update has come out. I asked for feedback back in September, and we released the update at the end of October. By the time that feedback started pouring in, what we planned on releasing in the fall update was already mostly done - we started shortly after we released the spring update. And now that we've released the fall update, many people have jumped on to the design and planning phase for 2007. I asked for feedback to help us with our planning for 2007 and beyond. So we're not ignoring feedback, but knowing a little more about the process should help frame expectations a little better. However, I understand that at the end of the day, the end user generally doesn't care. But then if you're here reading this, you might actually be curious or at least open to getting some insight.

If anything, we have proved that we are not only able but willing to invest in making the user experience of the Xbox 360 best in class. We will do this by adding new functionality (i.e. Video Marketplace, HD-DVD, etc.) as well as improving existing ones (i.e. Xbox Live Arcade enumeration, etc.). It's a constant struggle between the two.

Thanks for your feedback - regardless of whether you think we listen, we do. It just makes it easier when it's thoughtful, rational, and judiciously uses CAPS and ad hominem attacks. ;-)

Zune Preview Event, NYC

Tue, 07 Nov 2006 18:10:56 GMT

Helping out with the Zune preview event that we're holding at a space on the west side. We've got a full day of media people coming through to see the Zune Marketplace, PC software, accessories, and of course the Zune device. I'm manning the living room setup where we're also showing how Zune works with Xbox 360 and to help answer any Zune-related questions they might have. No one should be walking out of this today without knowing everything there is to know about Zune! One week left, and you can get one for yourself.

Got up at 5:45 AM, ate breakfast with some of the guys on the team, then promptly showed up on site at 7:30 AM. Tonight, the place turns into a club where we've got MSTRKRFT and 120 Days onstage. Tomorrow, back on a plane to Seattle. Hello, jet lag.

Movies and TV Shows on Xbox Live

Tue, 07 Nov 2006 04:01:41 GMT

This is the big thing that we have been working on but haven't talked about - until now. Starting November 22, you can download movies and TV shows to your Xbox 360 console via Xbox Live! Check out the official news release on Xbox.com. Here's the story on Yahoo and New York Times (you might need to register for free to read that one).

I've heard some disappointment with the Fall update, saying that they expected more. Well, here's more. You'll be able to download both standard and high def videos, and let me tell you, they look and sound amazing.

So, quick recap for the latter half of 2006 for Xbox 360: movies and TV shows available on Xbox Live, new Fall update, HD-DVD accessory, wireless headset, force-feedback wheel, video camera. Did I miss something? However you want your entertainment, Xbox 360's got it. You excited yet?

This is going to be one hell of a holiday season.

Zune.net Has Been Turned On

Thu, 02 Nov 2006 18:55:19 GMT

As of 5:30AM Pacific, zune.net is available to the world! Check it out.

And an article on Red Herring describes a study that suggests "more than half of of the iPod faithful surveyed would consider a Zune." Pretty interesting, I would say.

Fall Update Problems

Thu, 02 Nov 2006 07:30:56 GMT

So here's the official word on the reports of problems with the fall update from Major Nelson, and this one from Gamerscore Blog. In short, we're doing everything we can to make sure that the issue is resolved for those people who are having problems. Once we started getting reports, this became the single highest priority for the Xbox organization.

If you're one of the few people who ran into this, I'm sorry. It sucks, and I'd be pissed, too.

We'll fix it.

Edit:

Those of you who were stuck in the endless update loop should have had the problem fixed if you try connecting to Xbox Live again. If you are still seeing an error message, please contact your local Xbox support number which you can find here. Thanks for your patience.

Fall 2006 Update Announced

Mon, 30 Oct 2006 22:10:43 GMT

We've officially announced the details of the fall update on xbox.com. Elle's written an article as well talking about some of the changes. Starting 2:00AM October 31, 2006 members will start receiving the update when they connect to Xbox Live.

I love how zippy Arcade is now. Wireless headset rocks. I can't say that 1080p support makes my life any better since I am using 720p on my setup at home, but it addresses some of the PS3 FUD and for those wealthy few who have bought a 1080p display, I'm sure this is a welcome improvement. Personally I'm quite happy with 720p, thank you very much. I'll upgrade to 1080p when that format is actually commonplace and completely standardized, as well as when front projectors that support it are more affordable. I know that watching Ray on HD-DVD this weekend was awesome.

When you get the update, I'd love to hear feedback on some of the user experience changes that we're introducing. Again, good or bad.

And no, there is no multi voice chat or a web browser. Yes, we heard you.

Personally I would love to have multi voice chat. I'm tepid on the browser. Just because the competition says they're doing it shouldn't be the only reason for us to do it as well. Without a mouse, keyboard, and high resolution displays browsing the internets is painful. Again, these are my personal views on this and not necessarily those of others at Microsoft...

Interview With Zune Designer Steve Kaneko

Thu, 26 Oct 2006 21:09:42 GMT

My design director here in the Entertainment Experience Group, Steve Kaneko, has a short interview where he talks about the colors of the Zune family and talks a little bit about the design approach and process that we went through.

I love the double-shot color-on-color treatment. Personally, I go back and forth on my favorite color. I initially had a brown (with green double-shot) unit, and now I'm toting around a black w/ blue unit. I'm going to borrow someone's white one, too. Choices, choices.

What's the Problem?

Sun, 22 Oct 2006 03:45:27 GMT

Haven't written in a while. It's been busy on the Xbox 360 and Zune homefronts. Soon enough everyone will get to see what we've been working on for the past few months.

The subject of this entry isn't meant to refer to the state of either of these products. It's a short summary of one of my favorite design approaches. You're probably wondering what the hell I'm smoking or that I'm a hideously difficult person to work with. If you knew me you would know the answer to both of those questions.

I believe that one of the most difficult aspects of design isn't in the creation or production of the end product; it's in the definition of the problem that the end product is designed to solve in the first place. Through experience and observation, I would also contend that the lack of clarity on the problem at hand is one of the most common causes of the disagreements and issues that plague any project, and it's even more lamentable because it is also one of the most preventable.

Here's a simple real-life example. It may seem innocuous, but hopefully it gets the point across. Names and details have been removed to reduce the chances of someone wanting to hurt me.

George is working on the sign-up process of one of the many projects we're working on. On the final page of this process, the user is presented with a clean layout with minimal text of one short phrase for each option, and on rollover an additional sentence appeared beneath each one. Unfortunately, users in a usability test were having a lot of trouble understanding what these options meant and some people on the team were also voicing their concern. After some discussion a set of new page layouts were put together to help address the problem. It was decided that the rollover behavior was unnecessary so each option always appeared with a phrase and sentence below it. George asked me to help select the new layouts from the six options.

I started asking some questions. Apparently a few weeks back one of the proposals for this page contained three distinct boxes, one for each option, which contained a short paragraph and a couple bullet points describing in some detail what each option was. However in subsequent reviews, Fred (a senior visual designer) expressed a strong dislike for this approach since it looked cluttered and messy - too much text. Fred was able to convince other people that a clean, minimalist approach was better. So the decision was made to reduce the options to the three phrases with a single additional line on rollover. Which leads us back to the usability results and new layouts.

So, what's the problem?

Going back to the original reviews with Fred, it seemed to me that George and Fred weren't solving the same problem. Unfortunately, they came to a decision on the solution but never agreed on the problem they were solving! From Fred's standpoint, the problem was clearly an issue of visual clutter; obviously the opportunity to reduce text and present a clean layout was the solution. George, on the other hand, was trying to address the user's lack of information about each of the three options they were presented with. These two problem statements aren't mutually exclusive, but because they never came to an agreement as to what the problem was they weren't able to provide a comprehensive solution.

On to round two, here we are again with new layouts and mostly the same text. Again, it seemed that no one had really asked what the problem being solved was. I read the usability report. Users weren't understanding what the options meant, and I wasn't convinced that any of the new layouts solved that problem any better. The problem was to give the user clearly understandable options while providing a visually pleasing and clean page layout. There was a relationship between the three options that was important but completely obscure in the first version and the subsequent layouts. We seemed to have solved the latter half of the problem, but not the first.

So we completely rewrote the text for the options, and spent a good amount of time rewriting and editing until we finally got to three phrases with respective single sentence descriptions that could fit in nicely with any of the proposed layouts.

Looking back, the first missed opportunity was when George and Fred were initially talking about the original options. If they had only asked what problem they were solving, they could have synthesized both of their concerns and come to a solution that addressed them both. The second opportunity was in the redesign, where again the problem wasn't clearly stated so the solutions were again incomplete.

Next time you find yourself in a situation where people seem to be arguing in circles or the discussion devolves into a series of critiques on each person's pet solutions, ask yourself if everyone is actually solving the same problem. The programmer may be trying to improve performance, the tester may be trying to reduce instability, the program manager may be trying to ship on time, the usability engineer is concerned about usability, the graphic designer wants to keep things clean and beautiful, etc. These aren't mutually exclusive problems, but individually the solution to each one can be vastly different and these people will never agree. To move forward it may devolve to seniority, who yells the loudest, politics, lack of time, or lack of resources.

I have found it very helpful to ask early on, "What problem are we trying to solve?" When you are able to articulate that and agree on it as a team, it makes it much easier to provide the right solution and reduce the friction between the people involved. Let me know if this technique works for you - it seems simple, but I've found that people don't do it often enough.

Guitar Hero II on Xbox 360

Thu, 28 Sep 2006 19:27:48 GMT

More goodness from X06. Major Nelson has a picture of him playing Guitar Hero II on Xbox 360. Woohoo! And IGN reports the story as well.

Unfortunately this also means I'll be shelling out too much money on new guitar peripherals since my PS2 guitars are likely not going to be compatible with my 360. Game + 2 guitars is gonna be steep, but I'm sure a lot of people, including me, will be more than happy to fork it over for some guitar goodness. It's amazing to see games that depend on peripherals do well, but if you've even played Guitar Hero you can understand why. That game became a system-seller, and deservedly so.

And on 360, I should expect Guitar duels over Xbox Live, new downloadable content on Marketplace, and the ability to see that I am not worthy compared to the rest of you. I can't wait to see what achievements they dole out.

No release date yet though - here's to hoping it's coming sooner rather than later. If 2006, then Guitar Hero II and Gears of War are going to be taking up a lot of my gaming time leading up to the holidays.

Edit: Added link to IGN.

Halo RTS Coming to Xbox 360

Thu, 28 Sep 2006 06:19:10 GMT

As many of you probably already know, X06 happened in Barcelona and quite a number of things were announced. I'm not going to recap all of it as I'm sure there are too many of those out there. But just in case you haven't heard, coming sometime soon-ish to an Xbox 360 near you - Halo Wars! Take the basic ingredients from the Halo universe, put 'em together in a way only Ensemble Studios can, and what do you get? One hell of a compelling Real-Time Strategy (RTS) game, that's what.

Some of you may know that Halo was originally conceived as an RTS game way back when. In a way this is the game coming back around to its original roots. As a long-time fan of RTS games and a onetime avid Halo & Halo 2 player, I'm extremely excited. Many people believe that RTS games belong only on the PC, and if you look at the past 10-15 years that isn't unreasonable to think. Most of the console RTS games have been horrible ports of PC games, and it's no wonder that none of them have really gained much critical acclaim. The problems of designing a control scheme and UI along with the limitations of TV resolution have made this a long-standing problem in console game development. Recently, however, Battle for Middle Earth II has broken new ground and has given consoles a worthwhile RTS. I've spent some time with that game myself and I think its execution is really good. But we come full circle. Arguably the first RTS was created for a console - Herzog Zwei for the Sega Genesis. And yes, it was awesome. So awesome. If you have any interest whatsoever in RTS games, you owe it to yourself to try this game out.

I was in high school when this game came out, and I remember playing this awesome 2-player split screen game with my friend Nick until the wee hours of the morning. A few years ago I went to Ebay and found myself a copy of this game and it has held up amazingly well. Now that Nick works up here on the Xbox team as well, maybe we should relive those geeky high school days. On second thought, maybe not.

Zune Unveiled

Fri, 15 Sep 2006 06:20:34 GMT

Microsoft officially unveiled Zune! Here are a couple articles from MSNBC and the Seattle Times. Expect to hear more details about our new venture over the coming weeks.

Here's a link to the Zune Insider Blog where you can get a lot more details on the device, software, and service. He also has links to the first videos of the device UI.

One of the things that Cesar says in his blog is that Zune Marketplace will use Microsoft Points, the same system that people are currently using in Xbox Live Marketplace. To date people have purchased over 2 billion points and have done over 50 million downloads from Xbox Live! So if you've got an Xbox Live membership you can use the same points in your account in Zune. So you can choose to spend those points on the newest Xbox Live Arcade title, or the latest hit from your favorite band. Cool, eh?

I can tell you that there have been a whole lot of people smarter than I who spent a lot of time and effort figuring out this whole Microsoft Points thing. I was involved in a lot of discussions and meetings leading up to launch last year where we were figuring out the nitty gritty details of how this new system was going to work. I was mostly involved in how it would work in Xbox Live, but we needed to make sure that it was a system that could work in other Microsoft ventures. Why do you think it's called Microsoft Points instead of Xbox Live Points? At any rate, it seems like the idea has been well-received.

Edit: Additional information and links.

On Vacation with Mario

Wed, 13 Sep 2006 15:43:16 GMT

For relaxing, I do one of three things: read, watch movies, and, of course, play games. On my vacation I took with me four books (two of which were half-read), a few DVDs, and my DS. I have been heavily favoring my DS over my PSP over the last year so it wasn't a tough choice. I've been holding off on getting the New Super Mario Bros., but decided to get it for my trip. It was a good choice.

In a world of teraflop gaming machines with ultra-realistic lighting and ragdoll physics, it's great to play a classic 2D sidescroller platformer again. Even better when it's your favorite mustachioed, pot-bellied plumber. The controls are tight, the graphics delightful, and the sounds classic. It's a great game - if you have any interests in platformers, pick it up.

Like many people who have been playing games on their Xbox 360, I have found the achievement system a maddening but obscenely compelling behavioral influencer. I'm not what I would call a Gamerscwhore, but I find myself looking for a game's achievements to help guide my gaming experience. I want all my games to give me Gamerscore and achievements, and I find myself missing them dearly. I want my Fireball Mario achievement, my dump-Bowser-in-the-lava achievement, and my 50 Gamerscore when I beat World 2. I really do wonder if Nintendo or Sony will be picking up on this phenomenon; I heard that the PS3 "entitlement" system may be a myth, but I guess we'll have to wait until November to see.

Another thing I would have done differently with NSMB is the save system. You get prompted to save after completing specific levels or by "purchasing" locked levels with your coins. Why not automatically save after every completed level, or allow saves anytime in the map view? I've had to lose progress a number of times because I played a level or two during a spare few minutes and then had to do something else; I didn't want to just snap the DS shut and lose precious battery life. Not a huge deal, but it's still something I find myself dealing with regularly.

Overall, I'm happy to have Mario with me on my vacation. Now if he can only give me massages, that would be perfect. On that note, I tried foot reflexology and found it one of the most painful experiences of my life. Even if it were Mario doing that to me, I would still be tempted to punch him in the face.

Wow

Wed, 13 Sep 2006 13:31:17 GMT

The response to this open call for feedback has been enormous! We appreciate the community's passion and desire to make the Xbox 360 experience better. Many folks from the Xbox team have been reading through the comments, making notes, and comparing them to our own internal (and personal) lists.

For anyone involved in product development, you know that it's difficult to strike a balance between adding new functionality versus making existing ones better. However at the end of the day our goal is to provide the best user experience that we can deliver. The goal of this open call is to open another channel in our dialogue with our customers and users.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts with us - we have learned a lot and it's been great to read through all the direct and thoughtful feedback. Hopefully this can be an ongoing discussion that will make Xbox 360 and Xbox Live simply the best gaming and entertainment experience out there.

Sincerely,

Wildchicken and the rest of the Xbox team

P.S.

Keep the discussion going! If you've got something to add to the conversation, jump in.

Xbox 360 User Experience Feedback

Tue, 05 Sep 2006 00:49:16 GMT

Until I figure out how to put a permanent article for getting feedback on the Xbox 360 UX, I'm going to start by putting this blog entry in specifically for that. Feel free to leave comments, issues, suggestions, etc. Know that I or someone from the UX team will be reviewing them, if not necessarily commenting.

When we finally announce the details for the Fall update, I'll also discuss some of the more salient UX additions and improvements that we will have delivered.

Edit: I've added a "Headlines" list to the left with permalinks to this and other entries of interest. Maybe I'll find a better name for the list in the future, but for now it's probably fine. I'll update this list as necessary on an ongoing basis.

Xbox 360 Accessories - Concept Drawings

Fri, 01 Sep 2006 03:30:44 GMT

We're coming out with some great accessories for the Xbox 360, and here's some exclusive concept drawings of the Xbox 360 Wireless Racing Wheel, Xbox Live Vision Camera, and Xbox 360 Wireless Headset. It's really cool to see these things go from pure concept to real product - I've learned a ton over the past few years and it's awesome to have the opportunity to play in the hardware/software space. You can thank John, our Xbox industrial designer-at-large for these pictures, and you can only see them here!

We're Hiring!

Thu, 31 Aug 2006 05:22:09 GMT

Interested in joining one of the best user experience teams in the industry? Do you or someone you know want to be involved in the ongoing design and definition of Microsoft's new entertainment strategy? We're looking for a great candidate to join our team as a Lead User Experience Program Manager. If you've got what it takes, please apply!

The Monkey

Wed, 30 Aug 2006 20:52:54 GMT

About a year ago we were trying to finalize the gamer pictures for launch - it was a fun but hectic experience. You can see the dozen that we shipped on every single Xbox 360 console whenever you try and create a new profile. One of the more popular ones is the Monkey - I still see a few of these on my Friends list after almost 10 months after launch. I decided to ping Jake, one of our talented designers, who was responsible for this and I asked him for some of the sketches that led to that final illustration. Enjoy.

Dead Raising My Blood Pressure

Thu, 24 Aug 2006 18:45:47 GMT

My friend Nick lent me Dead Rising the day he got it four days ago. He had to buy himself a replacement copy and now I owe him $60.

The game looks really good, and the presentation is great. The first couple minutes of the helicopter ride was one of the coolest game openings I've experienced in a while. I've only put in a couple hours into it, but it's got my attention for now. I haven't really been much into zombies in any medium, but I'm actually having fun with this.

But...

The save system SUCKS. I can't believe that you can only have a single save per storage device (MU or HDD), and you really need to look for save locations to do it because they're out of the way and sparsely sprinkled throughout the game. How is that fun? I was actually having fun playing the game, but I got eaten by a mob of zombies and lost an hour's worth of gameplay because I forgot to save. Is this the 90's or something?

Then to top it all off, the aiming mechanism when you have a gun is quite unintuitive, especially if you've played any kind of FPS. In normal gameplay, the left analog stick moves your character around while the right stick changes the camera angle. Pretty standard for adventure-type games. But because of the standard controller layout (which you can't change, btw), pulling the right trigger puts you in aiming mode to shoot guns or throw objects. To top it off, the default setting has you looking in the direction your character is facing, not the direction the camera is facing. When I ran into this problem during the game's first gun-shooting event, I couldn't stop cursing and almost put the game down - my tolerance for UI and control problems in games is quite low.

Putting on my game designer and interaction designer hats, here are my thoughts on these problems.

I can't think of any other excuse for the save mechanism other than to artificially add tension to the game. They wanted the gamer to feel precious about saves, and it adds another thing for the gamer to worry about when playing. However, gamers have gotten used to being able to save anytime/anywhere, autosaves, or save points within reasonable locations. Their system seems like a throwback to the last decade, and it didn't really seem necessary. In fact, it's just frustrating. I does add another mechanic to the game, but an unnecessary one, in my opinion.
The aiming problem stems from the standard button layout they devised. They should have integrated the aim/shoot requirements into the standard control scheme instead of making it feel tacked on. And they should have made the default aim based on camera direction, not character direction.

There are a number of other flaws in the game (i.e. text size, cell phone UI, mission tracking/selection, etc.) but these two were the ones that really bothered me.

However there's something quite satisfying about using most items in the environment to kill hordes of undead. It's a great addition to the Xbox 360 portfolio, and I'm glad that Nick realized that it's better for him to get another copy rather than wait for me to remember to bring it in.

PS3 User Interface

Tue, 22 Aug 2006 06:32:16 GMT

There's a video going around showing the PS3 user interface. I think it's a mixed bag. Of course these are simply my opinions and observations based on a short video that's circulating the internets.

Pluses:

Feels clean, snappy, and responsive.
Icon style makes it feel friendly and approachable.
Familiar UI to users of other Sony products that use the same UI model.

Meh:

Looks dated, especially if you consider the XMB GUI was introduced with the PSX that Sony introduced back in 2003.
Doesn't look very scalable, especially as you think about filling up that 20GB or 60GB hard drive. Odd considering the XMB was designed for scalability, so maybe I'm just missing something.
Text size feels a little small, especially for the majority of users out there without 1080p HDTVs. Potentially unreadable for some folks. However if they expect the vast majority of their users to be HDTV owners, then maybe it's on purpose.
Where's the meaty stuff, like friends lists, messages, entitlements, etc.?
Doesn't feel like a destination. Very different philosophy compared to the Xbox 360 UI which was designed to be, and has become, a destination. The addition of the Dashboard startup option has proven very popular for our user base.
Bland looking, but they did say that it's lacking the personalization/wallpaper that it's supposed to support. Does everyone want themselves to show up on their system as a smiley face?
System update button - doesn't this just automatically update itself when connected to the network?
Not sure why Sony is deciding to continue using the XMB across products that have different contexts of use, different users, and different functionality and scalability. I can find some rationale behind the choice, but it seems like a lost opportunity.
Looks like they went ahead and decided that the Xbox 360 Guide Button was a good idea to bring up in-game system UI. Questionable implementation though - might be difficult to read depending on the what's happening in-game.
The commentators on the video are definitely putting as positive a spin on it as they can; seems like they don't want to bite the hand that feeds them since Sony let them release this preview.
The information architecture doesn't seem optimized.
Doesn't feel as innovative as I would have hoped.

I have a PSP so I'm familiar with the XMB UI model; I'm not in love with that experience either.

Xbox 360 Tips

Mon, 21 Aug 2006 22:58:25 GMT

I added a new list - Xbox 360 Tips - where I'm going to try and describe some tips & tricks for getting the most out of your Xbox 360, find some interesting behaviors, or simply have more fun with it. It's down below the blog text. I'll try and update this on a regular basis until I run out!

Let the games begin - please!

Sat, 19 Aug 2006 07:09:35 GMT

I often have interesting conversations with colleagues, friends, and random acquaintances about the latest PS3 or Wii news. It seems like every day there's something new to discuss.

Truthfully, I'm getting tired of it. I'm bored with the hyperbole, the trash-talking, and posturing. I'm glad that I'm not a marketing or PR person in this fight, but I have the utmost respect for those professionals who are. Those of us in the product development side of things should try our best to deliver the best products and give those folks the most ammo to fight with.

I fully expect both of our competitors' consoles to be solid. I have nothing but respect for Sony and Nintendo; they are among the world's best brands and companies, and they've been doing this for a while. I would actually be disappointed if they released a crappy console, both as a gamer and as a competitor. I've owned every single Sony and Nintendo game platform except for the original Gameboy, Virtual Boy, and Super Nintendo. I took a break from gaming during college so I can concentrate on school, work, and attempts at a social life in between sleep.

The truth is, the product that hasn't come out will always compare favorably to the product that that's already in the market. I just want the next-gen games to begin in earnest. I want Sony and Nintendo to release their respective consoles into the wild so we can start to have slightly more grounded comparisons and discussions based on what's actually out. Fanboys will always be fanboys, but at least it will be more difficult to dispute real plastic, metal, and silicon instead of vapor.

Until then you may have to settle for wood.