The intricacies of UI design can represent a significant challenge to even the most attentive of developers. Yet, good UI design is even worse. It can be likened to a “black art of guesswork”, trying to penetrate the mind of the average user.

The XBox 360 Dashboard is no exception, being the centerpiece of interactivity within Microsoft’s Xbox 360 platform. With gameplayers being among the most critical and least forgiving audience in the world, designing interaction within the UI manifests a mind-boggling challenge.

Enter Paolo Malabuyo, User Experience Lead for Microsoft’s Entertainment & Devices Division. Obviously, his responsibilities are vast, but he’s gone one step further to ensure that his UI meets the high demands of its users.

He’s asked the gamers themselves.

Interested users or developers are invited to visit his blog, Wildchicken’s MSN Livespace, and make their suggestions to the Xbox 360 UX team. The conversation should prove to be particularly spirited!

If you are a user experience professional yourself, you may also find the breadth and colour of the discussion instructive. Those unfamiliar with Dashboard may find it beneficial, particularly UI designers interested in improving their own designs. Or to take a page from Paolo’s playbook, don’t be afraid to ask your users. Even if they’re gamers!

XBox 360, UI Design, User experience.

I just got back from a book signing and presentation by Dean Takahashi, author of The XBox 360 Uncloaked. This is one of the things I like about living in the Bay Area, getting to go to cool things like this.

Dean had some interesting stories to tell about his journey writing this book and I began to see why Twichguru.com said, “You could argue that no one outside of Microsoft knows more about its Xbox game business than Dean Takahashi.”
Dean promises that there is “less profanity in this book” than in his last, Opening the XBox. (Kinda makes you want to read his first book, doesn’t it?) What the book does include is “blow by blow” coverage of heated internal debates as senior executives worked to bring the product to market. In particular, check out the chapter called Ed Fries Last Stand. The book also has plenty of interesting anecdotes about the launch events and all of the craziness and brilliance that went into developing the XBox 360.

Get the book on Amazon here and don’t forget to write a review when you’re finished.

Tags: Xbox 360 , Microsoft , Xbox , Gaming

This is the title of an up coming keynote speech from Graphics Hardware 2006. Matt Pharr is the speaker and his background at both Pixar and Nvidia makes the topic even more interesting.

On a similar note the August issue of Scientific American has an article entitled “A Great Leap in Graphics” where they also point to a quantum jump forward in computer graphics from both a shift to ray-tracing and multi-core CPUs like Cell.

This week Las Vegas welcomed over 130,000 people, most of whom won’t spend any money in the casinos.

For gamers, there was a lot to see at CES as everything from operating systems to televisions were positioned around how they could enhance the gaming experience. (Personally, I want the 103-inch (!) plasma TV Panasonic unveiled on Wednesday)

Microsoft had an impressive booth highlighting the 360 with rows of games and some interesting Xbox 360 displays (see below).

IBM showed off the range of technology its design services group has developed in everything from gaming systems to karaoke machines (I kid you not).

Microsoft’s Xbox 360 booth

Tags: IBM, CES, Consumer Electronics Show, Xbox 360

I was the Chief Engineer for the development of the XBOX 360 CPU chip and Tuesday, October 25 I presented details about the chip and how we developed it to Microprocessor Report’s Fall Processor Forum. Here’s some of what I presented. (more…)

IBM today released the specifications of the chip that’s at the heart of the new XBox 360 at the Fall Processor Forum in San Jose.

The chip is a customized version of IBM’s industry leading 64-bit PowerPC core. Some highlights include:

– 3 identical multi-threaded PowerPC-based CPU cores operating at 3.2 GHz enhanced with specialized function VMX acceleration for gaming applications and a high speed 128-bit vector unit

– 1 MByte Shared L2 Cache with custom logic for high-speed data streaming for graphics and system applications

– 5.4 Gb/s per-pin Front Side Bus (with an aggregated bandwidth of 21.6 GBs)

– Highly configurable and programmable utilizing eFUSE technology

The chips are being made at IBM’s fab in East Fishkill, NY, and at a plant in Singapore owned by Chartered Semiconductor, who was a partner in the chip’s development.

Dean Takahashi writes a great post that explains the significance of this announcement to IBM and the technology industry as a whole. Pay attention to his discussion of the close collaboration between Microsoft and IBM that occurred throught the development.

This was a remarkable development cycle. Microsoft was absolutely determined to get the XBox 360 on the shelves globally before Sony could do so with PlayStation 3. As a result, IBM had to accelerate the development process, shaving as much as 30% - 35% off the “normal” development time while holding to Microsoft’s exacting quality and performance standards.

For IBM, this chip - along with the forthcoming Cell processor for PS3 and the chip we’re building for Nintendo’s forthcoming Revolution console - is physical validation of its microelectronics strategy. The kind of computing power used by the NextGen consoles strongly foreshadows where IBM believes computing is headed. A whole generation of developers, raised on the intense visual interface offered by computer games, will look to harness these capabilities to solve real-world problems.

As Takahashi notes of the Microsoft-IBM partnership at the end of his blog, “Talk about strange bedfellows. It’s like the PC wars never happened. And there’s new enemies to fight.”

Indeed.

Tags: IBM, xbox, Microsoft

Chris Satchell from the Xbox Advanced Technology Group told the BBC that the console was designed from the ground-up to be as secure as possible.

“One of the reasons we went with custom hardware design for all our silicon is that it allows us to build security at the silicon level,” he said. “There are going to be levels of security in this box that the hacker community has never seen before,” but he admitted that “I’m sure sooner or later someone will work out how to circumvent security. But the way we have done the design doesn’t mean that it will work on somebody else’s machine.”

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