the mini Blog

Xbox 360 Kiosk at EB Games in the US.

I had some free time today so I went into town and had a look in GAME to see if it had a 360 kiosk. Sure enough it did. There was already someone playing on it but it wasn’t much time ’till I got my hands on it. My first impression was that the controller was extremely comfortable, a much better improvement over the controller ’s’ for the Xbox. The shoulder buttons that replaced the white and black buttons were in a good place and it didn’t interfere with the games. The game that was inside was Project Gotham Racing 3, which happens to be the game I want for the 360. To show off the high-definition capabilities of the 360, every 360 kiosk is shipped with a High-Def Samsung 23″ LCD TV. The gameplay was great and the cars looked awsome. It wasn’t difficult to play and was fun. There was a ‘hole’ to put in your memory card if you wanted to download some stuff from the 360 kiosk. However I found out that I couldn’t access the dashboard, nor quit the game. If I tried pressing the glowing ‘X’, then a message would pop up saying that I’m not allowed to access it. What’s up with that. I was happy to see that someone was bright enough to configure the console correctly and display it in high-def, unlike the Wal-Mart fiasco where the 360 wasn’t even put on to output video in high-def! I was quite dissapointed that it wouldn’t let me do that, as I have seen photos from the internet, and various comments saying that they had no trouble. Was it configured incorrectly or is that what it’s like for UK kiosks? Who knows.
My final word is that I think the kiosk is really cool, and sure lets you check out the 360’s beautiful games, but not see what the dashboard is like and how it works. Otherwise it is a really cool thing, and I hope more get put up in lots of places.