360 - This Generation's Most Interesting Console??

[gebx]

If you had to make a documentary about the life of PS3, Wii or Xbox 360 so far, you'd go for the latter, right?

Xbox 360 is three years old. It's also in more homes than its predecessor - according to MCV, the 25 million mark was hit earlier this month, and healthy sales are expected for the remainder of the year thanks to price cuts and the promotional activity surrounding NXE. Exciting stuff.

So let's say you were commissioned to document the rise of one 'next-gen' console. Which would you choose? I think Xbox 360 is the obvious option.

Sure the Wii Story would have some great early scenes of Nintendo R&D staff crafting the unique controller - I envisage a comedy montage of Wii Remotes flying from the hands of puzzled men in white coats until someone has a eureka moment and adds the wrist strap. There would be fantastic stuff from the console's premier at the 2005 Tokyo Game Show (a collective 'eh?' from the world's assembled press) and again from the pre-E3 2006 name announcement (a collective 'EH?!' from the world's assembled press). But after that, it's all been plain sailing, with the odd hardware shortage.

Same story with PS3. The juicy stuff would all be early in the plot: the legal battle with Immersion corp, the incredible disappearing HDMI and ethernet ports, the problems with Cell and Blu-ray production... You'd get some pathos from the lost GTA and Tekken exclusives, and a touching moment when Folding@Home becomes the biggest distributed computing project in history, but after that it's all, "hey, we're not doing so well in Japan!"

Xbox 360 on the other hand is a non-stop rollercoaster ride. It has, of course, possibly the greatest, most complex malfunctioning hardware story since the Apollo space missions. Rigorously documented by Dean Takahashi of VentureBeat, the Red Ring of Death scandal is a viper's nest of intrigue, rushed decisions, implausible denials and millions of dollars in repairs and replacements.

At the helm you had Peter Moore, a man who lived the console wars. Viewers could revel in his face-offs with Phil Harrison and Ken Kutaragi and thrill to his epic marketing experiments. Forget documentaries, this is movie material - I'm thinking Gary Oldman as Moore:

Scene 12: Int, Microsoft boardroom:

Oldman: The only way to launch this machine is with an MTV Special - and to present it, I want the best, I want a megastar who'll speak to every hardcore gamer in the land. That's right - someone get me Elijah Wood!
Actor playing Xbox exec: Elijah who?
Oldman: Fxxk you! I'll destroy you like I destroyed Dreamcast!
Actor playing Xbox exec: I think I have his agent's number right here.

There's also the Fox News/Mass Effect affair. The rise of Halo and Bioshock. The heartbreakingly unsuccessful attempts to attract the family gaming market ("I got it, what about a game with piñatas, except you don't smash them with sticks, you look after them!"). It's all there.

What do you think?

 http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/gamesblog/2008/nov/26/xbox-microsoft