Xbox Origen Disappointingly Revealed

The big secret that everyone's been curious about, the Xbox Origen puzzle, has been revealed. From the article: "The Origen Xbox 360 site has counted down, and it appears to be promoting a contest for European gamers to win a trip to an Xbox 360 launch party in the U.S. As for the updated site, it went live at approximately 7:00 AM ET. The tree is now covered with flags from all over Europe instead of fruit, as well as a link to xbox360.com in the lower left-hand corner. A Harry Potter movie-soundtrack-like toy piano is also playing a loop of a short musical progression in the background. Rolling over clickable objects on the tree produces a disappearing fairy-dust-like effect which follows the cursor."

Why?

[Seumas]

Being released early or first doesn't mean a thing. Being Microsoft means two things: First, that you could create, design and release a new fully featured and functional product in a few weeks if you really truly put the force of your entire company behind it and second that whether they spent five years or fifty developing it, it would still be microsoft quality - and standard microsoft experience. Take that how you like.

Whatever we like to think of microsoft, they have the resources (funding, connections, employees, engineering) to do just about whatever they want whenever they want. And so far, it's still the best choice for people who like to play games online.

As for people thinking the origen site might be launching a new bit of news about the Halo 3 release... um... no.... why would they?! The Halo 3 release is going to happen in 2006/2007 - whatever week the PS3 comes out.

I like it!

[Otter]

It seems like a nicely designed, fun little site to me, and a decent contest. I'm hardly crushingly disappointed, but then I don't get what you dweebs expected they were going to offer -- Gabrielle Union was going to come to your parents' basement and play Halo with you?

Geez, if Google was going to have a game development contest, with a $10k prize and all entries becoming their property, we'd be hearing how it's the greatestest thing EVAR!

Re:Why?

[Jerf]

you could create, design and release a new fully featured and functional product in a few weeks if you really truly put the force of your entire company behind it

Suggested reading [amazon.com].

Re:Why?

[Seumas]

The point is, do you think Microsoft just started throwing resources at this project in the last year? Or since the xbox had been out awhile? Or since the Xbox was released? Of course not. They had a complete team working on the 360 since before the original xbox was released.

Two or more generations of a product are often developed simultaneously. The idea that 'oh my god, they are releasing almost a year before Sony - so it must be missing something!" is just silly. That's the same kind of logic behind "we should call it Slackware 9.0 so it can compete with Red Hat's versioning system!"

Only those that don't think before they speak

[marcus]

Or in this case write.

There are two extremes, absolutes if you will, "everyone" and "no one". Very, very rarely does either apply in reality. Only by repeated application of hyperbole does this kind of expression come to be tolerated when it is almost always simply not true.

With very little effort a wide range of other possibilities come to mind. Try "many", "some", "most", "a majority of". All of these not only relieve a few of us from "preaching" but are actually closer to the facts of the situation. There is simply no reason to choose the wrong and in this case simply inflammatory words unless you are flamebaiting/trolling.

Re:I like it!

[Saige]

Microsoft didn't make a big deal out of it - the media did, especially Xbox-oriented gaming sites. They hyped it all up, so if it's a disappointment, blame the ones that did the hype.

Re:Look at us we're so special.

[Jarlsberg]

And let's dick over all American fans even though the site is a .com we'll make sure it's Europe only...

FYI, .com does not equal US, and furthermore, there is no .eu domain (yet).