01.19.07
Stuff I Overheard
Last night I had a rather interesting conversation with a polite woman involved in the video game industry. Her role in the industry was as a market analyst; she goes to stores, talks with gamers and the clerks, and tries to ensure that the most popular games remain consistently in stock. She was asking pretty much everyone about the games, and she seemed very interested in talking to me after I mentioned my work with NetJak. However, while we were talking, a couple of people came up and looked at the Xbox 360 in the display case. I swear to high heaven, this was the first sentence out of this person’s mouth: “You can lay it on its side? Really? No way!” I am sure that the fact that the writing on the disc tray is upright only when the machine is on its side, in addition to the fact that there are little rubber feet on both one side and one end of the machine, were just little oversights that this “ubr gamr” just happened to miss. It’s cool. Happens to everyone. I just don’t want to be behind this jerk when he overlooks a stop sign.
I have stories to tell about XBLA Texas Hold ‘Em voice chat fun (”fun” in this case meaning “being berated by three obviously drunken Scots simply because a) I didn’t speak and b) when I did speak, I was American– at least, I think they were berating me, because quite frankly I couldn’t understand a damn word they were saying”), but perhaps another time.
Ismail Saeed said,
01.19.07 at 7:57 am
Well, some textual signs are angled to the side in their logo design and so on. Doesn’t necessarily mean it’s orienting them correctly to fix the angle. Otherwise, I’d make some poor assumptions about which side of my PowerSpec PC is the bottom :).
Also, I don’t know offhand if the XBOX360 has large noticeable rubber feet, but I know for a fact that the PS2’s may as well be invisible. Rubber feet are usually tiny, cheap, colored the color of the system, and not very seen.
Are you saying she made some judgment about these folks? Why not say more about her? What was her perspective on the industry? That seemed to be your lead-in.
John said,
01.19.07 at 8:45 am
Yeah, I suppose it would be easier to miss the 360’s feet if they were white like the rest of the system. They’re more of a dark gray.
The lady was very nice and didn’t make much of any kinds of judgments. It was a lead-in only because it kept me in the store long enough to overhear the comment in question. Incidentally, I’d like to say more about her, but I’m saving that for a potential Netjak article, so… yeah.
Rob Browning said,
01.19.07 at 5:55 pm
You sure the guy actually owned a 360? Because if not, it’d be pretty understandable that he wouldn’t know about standing one on its side…
Rob