Quantcast

Articles

Special Feature: Warrior Woman (Part I)

By Alex Petraglia on Saturday, August 12, 2006 at 12:00 PM EST  

Mom First
In an interview with Primotech in October of 2005, Peter Moore revealed to us:

“…God forbid, even your mom will be playing games here [on the Xbox 360].”

A fairly brazen statement, but then again, the man chosen to spearhead Microsoft’s next-gen console offensive was never one for modesty.

Just about eight months later, we put Mr. Moore’s words to the test. But let’s back up a bit.

A lot has happened in the industry since the 360’s November 2005 launch. We’ve had another E3 that brought both new titles for Microsoft’s console to light, in addition to hashing out some details with regards to upcoming offerings from Nintendo and Sony. Despite some stumbling blocks around launch time, including hardware failure and lackluster sales in the Japanese market, the XBOX 360 has done wonders for Microsoft’s gaming business.

And all this time, I wondered about that fateful interview with Peter Moore. I wondered if what he said was a truism, or simply marketing talk in a pre-launch campaign to win over those typically not considered gamers.

Then, it hit me. I have a mom. This could work.

The reason why we set out to perform and publish this feature is two-fold.

First, we wanted to see if Peter Moore spoke the truth: Is the XBOX 360 really mother-friendly? We’ve taken everything into account here: the design and functionality of the unit itself, the bite-size XBOX Live Arcade offerings, and the diversity and appeal of AAA titles. We evaluate the whole package and see how alluring it is to your average 40-60 year old female.

Additionally, we feel that the gaming has hit a transitionary phase. This next-gen launch has so much more riding on it then pure consoles sales. By offering innovative offerings through online services, like XBOX Live Arcade, or even completely new ways to play, like the Nintendo Wiimote, events that have been and continue to unfold could finally draw the more elusive demographics into the gaming universe.

Has gaming finally reached the mainstream audience for all generations? The balance may rest in the hands of one woman…

Mom Second

First, a bit about test subject.

Mom Third
The Setup

Mrs. P:

I don’t consider myself a very tech savvy person. Heck, I still have trouble navigating my email. Yet had no trouble hooking up the XBOX 360. A perfunctory glance at the included documentation was needed to verify a few points, but other than that, it’s nearly fool-proof. Of course, not knowing this, other adults might be intimidated by the fact that they need to install the thing first. But again, the process was straightforward.

Next came filling out the personal information. This took sometime to complete, but wasn’t all that difficult. The on-screen keyboard took some getting use to, especially because I have grown accustomed to the typical computer keyboard layout of keys, rather than letters in alphabetical order. Some information I wasn’t sure about, but thankfully the machine filled in for whatever I didn’t know, like the network settings.

I really liked the sleek design of the interface and how simple it was to navigate. Microsoft really took all the guess work out of navigating around. As for the features, I could appreciate some of them, like downloadable content, private messaging, chat, and so on and so forth, but these thing didn’t really sell the console for me, mostly because I didn’t see myself using them all that much. If I became a more experienced XBOX gamer, maybe, but for our purposes, they never really factored into the equation all that much.

Related Stories

Comments

Leave a Reply