What goes through the designers' minds when they design a new console? Why do they design such weird shaped consoles?
Ever since the early days, we have had weird and wonderful shapes and colours, but very few consoles actually look the part underneath the Tv alongside the VCR / Dvd / Stereo...
Even now, the next gen consoles are still obtrusive - But Nintendo seems to have gotten something right where design is concerned, and have made something which wouldn't look out of place.
The PStwo also falls into this category, as it is small and slim, and unnoticable.
But almost everything else from th last 30 years is just plain fugly. And is it me, or do you find that nothing is stackable, with the exception of maybe the PS2, and one or two others...
You have huge consoles, such as the Xbox; Atari 2600 Heavy Sixer; NES; And Neo Geo's - Then you have your smaller consoles such as the DreamCast and GameCube - And medium sized consoles such as Snes and Mega Drive et al... Nothing seems to be standard sized.
You'd think that after 30 years of console design, that they would actually take a step back and think "Hmmm, maybe we should design something that stacks well; Won't look out of place under a Tv; And isn't obtrusive" - But no, they are still coming out with wacky designs that look like they should have *Fisher Price* written on them instead of Sony or Microsoft.
The Revolution will be one of the first consoles which actually looks good. It doesn't look like a game console - It actually looks like an expensive piece of stereo equipment
And Sony of all people should know by now how to design something properly - But what do they do? They give us something that looks identical to the previous effort, but with curves.
Microsoft - Xbox was almost there, but now they seem to have definitly added the *Fisher Price* look to the X360
And none of these companies seem to realise that many people will actually have more than just one console - TO collector's and gamers such as ourselves, most of us will have at least ten consoles, all of which are different shapes, sizes, and colours - And to be honest, they just look a mess next to on another.
One last thing - White. Who decides to make a console white? (Or rather, creamy coloured) - Haven't they learnt by now that consoles which are made from white plastic are prone to fading into a horrible yellow??? Surely Sega would have learnt this from the NES and Snes, but no, they still insisted on making the DC in the same colour, which also suffers from yellowing.