Microsoft Admits Xbox 360 Faceplate Failure

A leading Microsoft executive has admitted that the company's initiative to design and sell faceplates for its Xbox 360 home gaming console has been a failure, leading to the feature being dropped from the newly redesigned console that was released earlier during the year.

Albert Penello, who is the director of global marketing for the Xbox 360, has talked to the Official Xbox Magazine and has stated, “We don't ever create an accessory with the intent of having it fail. The idea wasn't bad... people used to put faceplates on their cell phones. Rewind five years, faceplates were what everybody wanted to do.”

He added that, “We killed that one pretty quickly” when the company saw that no one was interested in picking them up.

Dropping the faceplate idea and eliminating the concept altogether from the new Xbox 360 is a clear sign of the direction that Microsoft is taking its home console.

When it was initially released the Xbox 360 was mainly marketed to the so-called hardcore gamer, with the creators thinking that the more casual gamer would gravitate towards the Nintendo Wii, which was the first one to offer motion tracking based gaming.

But as the current generation evolved, Microsoft and Sony realized that the only way to increase sales was to offer a device which was suited to the needs of more than one category of potential customers.

The faceplates were a sign of a hardcore bias that was excised from the new incarnation of the Microsoft platform.

Instead Microsoft made a move towards the more casual market with the release of the Kinect motion tracking system and titles associated with it, which are expected to push the Xbox 360 forward in 2011.

In an effort to broaden its appeal, the Xbox 360 also offers services like Neflix and ESPN and could soon get an archive of television programs.