Does the Xbox 360 need a redesign? My answer is simple: Damn Right Skippy! With this being a website of extraordinary magnitude and a writing team of exceptional talent, a simple answer would be like a gold fish battered and sold in a reputable chippy, so I’ve now started something and must put my pad down to elaborate on my answer…
The 360 is big! We are talking “behemoth” and “keep it in the circus” big. Not such a bad thing if that power brick was included under the hood and not just another wire for my cats to chew on. But it is on the verge of needing to take a taxi from the power button to the disc eject button just to get a game going. Now the PS3 is also big but somehow managed to look quite elegant too, where as the 360 just looks intrusive. That’s not to say it is a bad console in anyway and this article is entirely my opinion, of which you are all entitled too – my opinion that is.
So if I was a surgeon and was to have the 360 on the chopping table, what would I chop? That disc tray would be out! How many times have I caught it when taking discs out or putting them in? A thousand I tell you! Well, perhaps I exaggerate and we’ll settle for nine hundred and ninety nine. It is really annoying too as it feels so easy to break when you catch it, not to mention the noise when it opens and closes. Like the automated doors on the USS Enterprise – ssssssshhhh CLUNK! So the disc tray is out and replaced with a slot tray, Captain Kirk will no longer feel like a prat shouting “can you at least knock please” each time Spock opens the tray for a little Viva Pinata.
I would then be giving that 360 some serious liposuction and getting the bugger Victoria Beckham thin, as in just enough but not too much (the face we can work on). The limit being that the console could not go thinner than the radius of that “ring of light”. The USB ports would then need to go horizontal instead of vertical and I would ditch one memory card slot as I hardly use one let alone both of them. The HDD (somebody once told me that was Heavy Duty Duracell) or Hard Disk Drive to those not tech savvy, would indeed need to be moved as it currently sits on the side (or top if the system is vertical) and would prevent the console getting thinner like free Dominos at a Weight Watchers meet.
So sitting that on top and perhaps enclosing it under a lid would be my preferable cosmetic alteration. I would instead have a third USB port on the side (top if the system is vertical) where the WiFi adaptor could be placed and would aim for a console “depth” the same as the WiFi adaptor at around two inches or less. I would also be tempted to get rid of the green ring of light and swap it for blue, especially for the Elite models where blue on black always looks better. But with Masterchief practically being the Xbox’s mascot the green is one thing I guess would need to remain consistent.
These are my opinions anyway. I’m interested to read about what alterations you may make to the 360 system and perhaps what you would like to have seen changed for the current PS3 Slim. Microsoft and Sony may not read your comments but here at TSA towers we will read as long as the coffee keeps on coming. Now beam me up big ears, I wanna see how you got those pesky piñatas to “do the dance”.