Have you seen HBO's Silicon Valley? I just binged on Season 3 of the tech startup-based sitcom. It's brilliant, incidentally, if you've missed it. Start at the beginning/begin at the start.
Without delving into spoiler territory, one recurring thread of Season 3 is the design/marketing/selling of a box.
It's never entirely explained what the box does - some sort of cyber security thing - the joke being around its uninspired, box-like design (of course, reaching the final, bland, rectangular model, requires a lengthy and pretentious design process).
Remind you of anything?
Without delving into spoiler territory, one recurring thread of Season 3 is the design/marketing/selling of a box.
It's never entirely explained what the box does - some sort of cyber security thing - the joke being around its uninspired, box-like design (of course, reaching the final, bland, rectangular model, requires a lengthy and pretentious design process).
Remind you of anything?
S-CLUB 7
So, the Xbox One S, then. It's out now, priced at £349 for the launch day 2TB model (there'll be subsequent releases with smaller hard drives, for some reason).
People seem quite excited about it. Yes, plenty of storage. Yes, integrated power brick. New joypad that'll work with your PC, if you have one. 4K Blu-Ray support for that 4K TV you don't actually own, and probably won't ever bother with after you got burnt by that 3DTV you spent thousands on. Oh, and it's 40% smaller than the previous Xbox One ("The smallest Xbox yet"), and doesn't have a socket for the Kinect 2.0 to plug into it.
But... it's just another box, isn't it? It's a white box, with a slot and some holes. The design is the most uninspired design of a thing since the current generation of consoles first arrived. I despair. I despair at how excited the industry seems to be about a redesign that - frankly - feels like a case of correcting past mistakes.
Anything which the Xbox One S offers is stuff that should've been there three years ago. Namely no Kinect, and without that ludicrous, family car-sized power thing, that you kept tripping over. The number of people who'll benefit from the 4K Blu-Ray compatibility is minimal - alright, it helps to future-proof the technology, but that's not the same thing as innovating. That's not a reason to be excited for it. It isn't sexy, or cool, or fun. It lacks character, and a sense of identity. It's a shrug, in box form.
It probably needed to be released, but the hoo-hah surrounding it won't bleed through to the normals. You know: the non-geeks. They're not going to care, in the way that some of us in this walled-off gaming community care.
So, the Xbox One S, then. It's out now, priced at £349 for the launch day 2TB model (there'll be subsequent releases with smaller hard drives, for some reason).
People seem quite excited about it. Yes, plenty of storage. Yes, integrated power brick. New joypad that'll work with your PC, if you have one. 4K Blu-Ray support for that 4K TV you don't actually own, and probably won't ever bother with after you got burnt by that 3DTV you spent thousands on. Oh, and it's 40% smaller than the previous Xbox One ("The smallest Xbox yet"), and doesn't have a socket for the Kinect 2.0 to plug into it.
But... it's just another box, isn't it? It's a white box, with a slot and some holes. The design is the most uninspired design of a thing since the current generation of consoles first arrived. I despair. I despair at how excited the industry seems to be about a redesign that - frankly - feels like a case of correcting past mistakes.
Anything which the Xbox One S offers is stuff that should've been there three years ago. Namely no Kinect, and without that ludicrous, family car-sized power thing, that you kept tripping over. The number of people who'll benefit from the 4K Blu-Ray compatibility is minimal - alright, it helps to future-proof the technology, but that's not the same thing as innovating. That's not a reason to be excited for it. It isn't sexy, or cool, or fun. It lacks character, and a sense of identity. It's a shrug, in box form.
It probably needed to be released, but the hoo-hah surrounding it won't bleed through to the normals. You know: the non-geeks. They're not going to care, in the way that some of us in this walled-off gaming community care.
THE OLD MAN
I'm getting old. It's my birthday in a couple of days. I'm halfway through my 40s. I get that it would be cliche of me to whine about things being better in the olden days.
Unfortunately, they were better in the olden days, in terms of the aesthetics of console design.
When I started my career as a games journalist, more than two decades ago, the Super NES and Mega Drive were the market leading games machines.
In the ten years or so which followed, we had the Nintendo 64, Game Cube, Dreamcast, Jaguar, PlayStation... all of them, in their own way, iconic.
I've had my Xbox One and PlayStation 4 sitting under my telly for years now, and I don't think I could describe either one of them to you. I couldn't even draw a picture. They're interchangeable slabs of black. Now the Xbox One has switched to white, which merely makes it interchangeable with the Wii U.
Where's the sense of fun and taking a risk gone? In the time I've been writing about games, I've seen consoles go from being toys, to trying a bit too hard to be cool, and now they're trying to disappear, blend in, be as invisible as all your other consumer electronics.
Why does it have to be this way?
I'm getting old. It's my birthday in a couple of days. I'm halfway through my 40s. I get that it would be cliche of me to whine about things being better in the olden days.
Unfortunately, they were better in the olden days, in terms of the aesthetics of console design.
When I started my career as a games journalist, more than two decades ago, the Super NES and Mega Drive were the market leading games machines.
In the ten years or so which followed, we had the Nintendo 64, Game Cube, Dreamcast, Jaguar, PlayStation... all of them, in their own way, iconic.
I've had my Xbox One and PlayStation 4 sitting under my telly for years now, and I don't think I could describe either one of them to you. I couldn't even draw a picture. They're interchangeable slabs of black. Now the Xbox One has switched to white, which merely makes it interchangeable with the Wii U.
Where's the sense of fun and taking a risk gone? In the time I've been writing about games, I've seen consoles go from being toys, to trying a bit too hard to be cool, and now they're trying to disappear, blend in, be as invisible as all your other consumer electronics.
Why does it have to be this way?
GROWN UP
Why is the games industry - or, at least, Sony and Microsoft - so intent on making their hardware look grown-up?
I've got a toaster - a machine which makes bread all crispy and hot - which has been designed with more of a sense of joy than the Xbox One/Xbox One S/PlayStation 4.
Are current console design philosophies meant to offer us technology which is as unthreatening as possible? Are they embarrassed by the fact that consoles are, essentially, toys? They're for playing. If you go to a jungle gym you don't expect it to look like a corporate boardroom. Yet that's exactly what the redesign of the Xbox One S suggests. What is the message that the Xbox One S is attempting to convey?
Microsoft's hardware lags behind the PS4. The Xbox One hasn't been a flop exactly, but it has struggled to narrow the lead of its closest rival. The Xbox One S would've been the perfect opportunity to take a risk, go nuts, tell people - through the design of the hardware - that the Xbox One S is the machine they should get.
The one which offers a gateway to entertainment possibilities the likes of which your tiny human mind could never have previously conceived, and will be a talking point when sat under the telly.
Show some ambition. Grow a pair of balls. Think outside of the damn box for once.
Why is the games industry - or, at least, Sony and Microsoft - so intent on making their hardware look grown-up?
I've got a toaster - a machine which makes bread all crispy and hot - which has been designed with more of a sense of joy than the Xbox One/Xbox One S/PlayStation 4.
Are current console design philosophies meant to offer us technology which is as unthreatening as possible? Are they embarrassed by the fact that consoles are, essentially, toys? They're for playing. If you go to a jungle gym you don't expect it to look like a corporate boardroom. Yet that's exactly what the redesign of the Xbox One S suggests. What is the message that the Xbox One S is attempting to convey?
Microsoft's hardware lags behind the PS4. The Xbox One hasn't been a flop exactly, but it has struggled to narrow the lead of its closest rival. The Xbox One S would've been the perfect opportunity to take a risk, go nuts, tell people - through the design of the hardware - that the Xbox One S is the machine they should get.
The one which offers a gateway to entertainment possibilities the likes of which your tiny human mind could never have previously conceived, and will be a talking point when sat under the telly.
Show some ambition. Grow a pair of balls. Think outside of the damn box for once.
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