Is Bill Gates Learning From the Mod Community?
We earlier featured an interview with one of MS’ Xbox Division software developer, Matt Lee. In that interview, certain issues were tackled such as Xbox 360’s lackluster performance in Japan and the future of Xbox 360. Apparently, these aren’t the juicy information that Mr. Lee shared.
In one of his responses to an inquiry about simpler development tools for the 360, he said that a colleague of his once brought his very own modded Xbox to a meeting with Bill Gates and other MS bigwigs. Mr. Lee’s colleague apparently did a good Xbox mod by installing Avalaunch, and all sorts of Xbox mod scene apps on the box, like XBMC, RSS readers, etc, along with some “backup” games.
That impressed Mr. Gates and apparently, instead of asking how such mods could be stopped, he actually asked, “How can we engage this community?“. From that response alone, it seems that Mr. Bill Gates is looking at some of the modders’ projects for some needed new learning and inspirations.
Also, if that’s the case, Mr. Gates also believes that modders are a good thing for the Xbox 360 community because of the ways they have improved their system (modders usually use their Xbox mods as cheap HTPCs). So maybe in the future, we could expect more dialogue between the modders, software developers, and consumers. So what’s your take on this? Do you think that Mr. Gates is learning from modders? Do you learn some new things from modders? Tell us through your comments.
Via arstechnica
We earlier featured an interview with one of MS’ Xbox Division software developer, Matt Lee. In that interview, certain issues were tackled such as Xbox 360’s lackluster performance in Japan and the future of Xbox 360. Apparently, these aren’t the juicy information that Mr. Lee shared.
In one of his responses to an inquiry about simpler development tools for the 360, he said that a colleague of his once brought his very own modded Xbox to a meeting with Bill Gates and other MS bigwigs. Mr. Lee’s colleague apparently did a good Xbox mod by installing Avalaunch, and all sorts of Xbox mod scene apps on the box, like XBMC, RSS readers, etc, along with some “backup” games.
That impressed Mr. Gates and apparently, instead of asking how such mods could be stopped, he actually asked, “How can we engage this community?“. From that response alone, it seems that Mr. Bill Gates is looking at some of the modders’ projects for some needed new learning and inspirations.
Also, if that’s the case, Mr. Gates also believes that modders are a good thing for the Xbox 360 community because of the ways they have improved their system (modders usually use their Xbox mods as cheap HTPCs). So maybe in the future, we could expect more dialogue between the modders, software developers, and consumers. So what’s your take on this? Do you think that Mr. Gates is learning from modders? Do you learn some new things from modders? Tell us through your comments.
Via arstechnica