XBox 360: Something for the ladies
Edge magazine has a big article about the XBOX 360 this month (the one in the gold Zelda box). I felt I had to share this part with you:
Allard takes Tony Hawk as a starting point and suggests different ways for non-gamers to get involved. A girl watching her brother play might be affronted by his avatar’s poor choice of clothes and use her laptop to access the Tony Hawk website’s clothing design tool. A few experimental efforts later, and she can upload a new T-shirt for him in the game. He wears it with pride, and his friends online like the look of it. And now the sister can go into business, selling her design via Live’s peer-to-peer micropayments system (previously announced at GDC). “Is she playing the game?” asks Allard. ”I don’t know, but she’s having fun.” Mum can get in on the act too. Not much of a gamer, but she’s keen to watch her son compete in one of these pro-gaming tournaments. Using a photo of herself taken with the 360′s camera, she can use a Sims 2-like system to create a recognisable avatar of herself, and get in position in the crowd, ready to cheer as her son comes in for his run.
This fits, I imagine, Microsoft’s profile of the kind of gamer the new XBox will be targetting. “Yeah, so I’m wearing clothes my little sister designed and I have a virtual representation of my mother to accompany me. Who’s up for a deathmatch?”
