An Inelegant Solution

Back at the second-ever World Cyber Games there was a talk during one of the Business Conference panels by some Microsoft reps, who were excited about bringing the Xbox to South Korea. They talked about bringing South Korea's official pasttime, Starcraft, to the Xbox. Then one (Korean) audience member asked, "But will you have a keyboard?"

The speaker - I wish I could remember who it was, it was a product manager from the Xbox group - shook his head definitively. "No, no keyboards. The console is for the living room. Computers and keyboards are for a different space."

"But," the questioner went on dubiously, "we are used to playing RTS with keyboards. How will we play without a keyboard?"

The Microsoft rep merely repeated, "We will never bring keyboards to a living room console."

Well, times change - and now we've reached the era when the distinction between locations and behaviors is really fuzzy. People *do* text in their living rooms, and they entertain themselves on their phones, and they watch movies on their PCs. So bringing a keyboard to a console doesn't sound as crazy as when Dreamcast did it (a console so ahead of its time in so many ways!) or when the Gamecube did. Anyone who has painfully tried to send a text message through xbox live using a controller will understand why Microsoft is releasing something like this. The only problem is, it is goofy. I mean, if this had appeared on any other website than Gamasutra I would have assumed it was a hoax.

But the new Live update and this peripheral is a sign that Microsoft is progressing on putting all their pieces together. The fact that the Xbox had to be modded to be fully functional - because Microsoft was so set on keeping it hard-coded to the "living room" - was fixed with Xbox 360, which has the best features of media sharing built in. And now they've added multiplatform support, further blurring the lines. It's certainly the way of the future - interconnect nodes of content accessibility and communication, all tied to a single user profile.

That said, it's goofy; it's an inelegant solution. Is there a better one? I'm not sure. I'll have to test this model out to see how it really functions in the context of gaming.

Comments

[bowler]

Just trying to hold a 360 controller in a fashion so that you could "crackberry" that keyboard with your two thumbs is already feeling awkward.

I didn't mind having a keyboard in my lap on the Dreamcast, but I suppose this is a compromise?

I kinda wish they'd just support a full keyboard. If I'm using a keyboard, I'm using a keyboard. If I'm using a controller, I'm using a controller. I thought having voice chat was going to kill the need to txt msg?

[keeks]

You can plug any USB keyboard into the Xbox 360 already. 'Tis much more confortable than some tiny thumb-based monstrosity.

[jane]

right, you can use any usb keyboard; but here i think the idea is to somehow enfold typing into gaming, which Phantasy Star Online did. i could see some cool applications for this, maybe.

Gigaom's writer thinks it's a ploy:
http://gigaom.com/2007/04/09/xbox360-im/

[xtraman]

lookz like alot of ffxi playaz will bii using it!!