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XBox (Games)

Xbox Origen Disappointingly Revealed 57

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."
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Xbox Origen Disappointingly Revealed

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  • Crap in, crap out.

    The real question is whether or not this is a refelection on the 360 itself. There's got to be something they're cutting corners on to get it out the door a full year before the PS3; hopefully, it's some mundane feature that won't make it to retail, as opposed to rock-solid functionality.

    We shall wait and see.
  • MS already blew its meta-game wad on Halo 2.

    Rob
  • If you navigate around enough, as I did this morning, you'll find part of the competition is naming what the XBox 360 is only slightly less great than. You are asked three questions about the system.

    Get them right and you get to submit your answer to "The X-Box 360 the best thing since..."

    Utter rubbish, it even encourages you to get 9 buddies to do it too. I opted to say that is was the best thing since my friend broke his foot. Wonder if I'll win...

  • So am I the only one that got big talking rabbits that eat the fruit off the tree and get wierd visions? fricken wierd site.
  • Why? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Seumas ( 6865 ) on Tuesday September 27, 2005 @01:11PM (#13659553)
    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.
    • Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Jerf ( 17166 ) on Tuesday September 27, 2005 @01:38PM (#13659786) Journal
      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? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Seumas ( 6865 )
        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
  • Um (Score:4, Interesting)

    by JavaRob ( 28971 ) on Tuesday September 27, 2005 @01:13PM (#13659568) Homepage Journal
    The big secret that everyone's been curious about, the Xbox Origen puzzle...

    Everyone - 1?
    I wasn't curious.

    Sorry, that kind of lead-in always bugs me. The rest of "everyone", you may now return to your disappointed curiosity. And I'll go back to my non-xbox-enriched life.
    • To grasp reality without going insane, humans must anthropomorphize concepts that do not exist into imaginary living breathing thinking sentient beings. For example, if someone were to say "Microsoft wants to kill Google with the XBox360 search features!", we would be fine reading that as a headline. However there is no such thing as Microsoft or Google as sentient beings or even a collective. Microsoft could not want to kill as much as Google could not physically be killed like a regular human. There mayb
      • 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. Ther
        • There is also no reason to correct something which is universally understood to be incorrect, and for which the correct meaning is universally understood, unless you're a symantics nazi. Since being a symantics nazi adds absolutely nothing to the conversation, and in most cases, this one included, does not educate any person, in any way, about any topic, and draws only negative responses, it is no better than flamebaiting/trolling.
      • To grasp reality without going insane, humans must anthropomorphize concepts that do not exist into...

        That's not anthropomorphism, actually -- it's just gross overgeneralization. In the case of the "Google/Microsoft wants this", etc. I think that's metonomy, but again not anthropomorphism. Google is made up of human beings.

        But whatever it's called (and if it's even worth talking about), I don't even think it would have been accurate to say "most people". I suspect that even saying "most slashdotters" wo
  • I like it! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Otter ( 3800 ) on Tuesday September 27, 2005 @01:22PM (#13659653) Journal
    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:I like it! (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Saige ( 53303 )
      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.
  • NOT a toy piano (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Gulthek ( 12570 ) on Tuesday September 27, 2005 @01:38PM (#13659778) Homepage Journal
    A celeste or celesta [wikipedia.org] (used in the HP theme) is most certainly not a "toy piano." Listen to the "Dance of the Sugarplum Fairy" by Tchaikovsky.
  • If you triple-click on the left rabbit hole, a paper clip comes up and asks, "It looks like you want to watch an idiotic Flash commercial. Would you like me to help you with that?"
  • This is a welcome change: being given a description of what I might find at the target site so I don't actually have to look at it myself.
  • Quite honestly - it's a site dedicated to the XBox 360. What did you think was going to happen?
  • I couldn't get past the drop-down where it asked what country I was from and it didn't list the USA. WTF?
    • Re:WTF? (Score:3, Funny)

      by (A)*(B)!0_- ( 888552 )
      "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"
      Are you a European gamer??

      Directly from the summary, THE SUMMARY!!!

      Darwin, where are you?

      • Actually, yes ... yes, I am.
        • It seems like the site is bugging out. The links within the flash animation are intermittently broken for me too. It's hard to tell if the site is just slashdotted or what, since it does transfer in spurts of 200-300KB/s.
          • they probably have a limit on the number of simultaneous connections, and it's been exceeded. they thought far enough ahead to be sure that each connection has enough bandwidth to do its work, but there aren't enough connections to go around, so everyone waits their turn to get their burst of traffic. kind of like token rings. blargh.

            in short, yeah, it sounds like they're slashdotted.

        • Then why are you looking for USA in the list of countries?
    • Wow, that's elitist. Not everything centers around the US, you know. ;)
  • note: I posted this ont he original article but it got posted against some random post not root.
      try
    https://www.origenxbox360.com/Halo2/default.aspx?c ountry=en-gb [origenxbox360.com]
    but I am not going to submit anything.
    you on the other hand ...

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