Xbox 360 Design Postmortem

GamersInfo.net posted an article on the Xbox 360’s design process – the design team’s goals from the start, the problems they were faced with, and so on.

Their idea: If the Xbox was the equivalent of Hulk with it’s size and raw power, the 360 should be Bruce Lee – lots of power hidden below a humble yet stylish surface.

The 360 team had much more manpower and time compared to the Xbox design phase: This time, they had 20 months and 19 employees as well as external design teams; whereas the predecessor was conceived by a mere 4 people, within a year.

One interesting tidbit regards the 360’s UI implementation. The design team was able to employ up to 250 MB for it on the original Xbox. The 360 however only allowed a mere 4.5 MB.

With carefully planned art direction, the team was able to stay within this limit, while increasing the total number of screens ten-fold, from 45 to 450 – pretty impressive.

Unlike most post mortems, the article doesn’t really mention what went a bit wrong, or anything they could have done better, so all in all it sounds a little self-aggrandizing. But if you’re interested in the “behind the curtains” stuff, it’s definitely a nice read.

GamersInfo.net posted an article on the Xbox 360’s design process – the design team’s goals from the start, the problems they were faced with, and so on.

Their idea: If the Xbox was the equivalent of Hulk with it’s size and raw power, the 360 should be Bruce Lee – lots of power hidden below a humble yet stylish surface.

The 360 team had much more manpower and time compared to the Xbox design phase: This time, they had 20 months and 19 employees as well as external design teams; whereas the predecessor was conceived by a mere 4 people, within a year.

One interesting tidbit regards the 360’s UI implementation. The design team was able to employ up to 250 MB for it on the original Xbox. The 360 however only allowed a mere 4.5 MB.

With carefully planned art direction, the team was able to stay within this limit, while increasing the total number of screens ten-fold, from 45 to 450 – pretty impressive.

Unlike most post mortems, the article doesn’t really mention what went a bit wrong, or anything they could have done better, so all in all it sounds a little self-aggrandizing. But if you’re interested in the “behind the curtains” stuff, it’s definitely a nice read.