It's my birthday, so you're going to read this and goddamn like it.
First off, I've been wanting to do this for a while, but lately I haven't had my computer with me at work as much, so I couldn't use Photoshop. Now that I've got some time on my hands I decided to go ahead and start this blog post. I didn't spend much time on the photoshopping, so these pics aren't the greatest, nevertheless, it's all my own original work.

Basically the purpose of this post is to show and tell what things I would change about the XBOX 360 if I were to redesign it for Microsoft.

First off, the system.


They need to drop one of these babys in place of the current full size drive.


Demonstration.

This image is stage one, Notice the drive tray is no longer a tray, but a slot disguised as a tray.
There are multiple reasons for this change. One being that drive trays are clunky and give the appearance and feel of last generation. Another reason (and more important) being heat issues. This helps one of the biggest technological flaws of the 360, it's restricted air intake points. The only air intake points are on the edges of the console. One edge being covered by the HDD, the other being covered completely when standing the console up like in the pictures. If you check out the guts of a 360, you will notice the DVD drive is laying directly on top of the GPU. This leaves little room for air to flow over the GPU heat sink. By adding the slimmer drive you get almost 1/2 inch more heat sink (which means more surface area to be cooled by the airflow).
Which leads me to stage two.


It may be a little fugly, but it's functional.

Notice the memory card slots have been stacked upon each other to make room for a small air intake/fan point. The guide button power switch is just a little flare that I added for my personal pleasure.

Next is the other thermal tweak that I would add.


This is a common mod among the 360 hacking community.

It seems to solve much of the thermal issues with both the CPU and GPU (seeing as how they added the new remote heat sink on the GPU located directly below these vent holes). A thin fan can be installed directly below these vent holes as well to increase cooling efficiency.

And now on to the things that I'm personally finicky about concerning the 360, which are not design flaws, but controller issues.


Put that battery on fuckin' weight watchers 'cause that thing is obese! A thinner battery will cut down on the overall weight and girth of the controller. It'll just feel better. That is all.



Yes, those sticks are bigger, and yes, that is an original xbox Dpad (I didn't know how to visually represent a better Dpad).
And finally the sticks, this is the number one annoyance to me about this console. The sticks seem EXTREMELY constrictive. The diameter of the sticks' range of motion is only about 1&1/8 inch wide (compared to about 1&1/2 inch on the Playstation, which is a major difference). Some people think I'm being too picky about this, but if you look at the facts, games in which you steer a car or aim a gun take extreme precision in your fingers if you want to make small, precise movements. A wider range of motion means a more precise control over a greater distance. This is why people consider the mouse to be the best game controller, because with a mouse you can move 1 cm or 1 foot because of it's pretty much unlimited range of motion (depending on your sensitivity). I often find myself jerking the car at intervals to get around a wide turn on Forza2 because one tiny movement inward and I'll be eating a wall sandwich. I also think about putting some lubricant in the sticks so the don't "snap" past my desired position. This kind of thing Cannot be remedied by changing the sensitivity setting, (such as in COD4) because the only way to offset it, is to lower the sensitivity, and that's the opposite of what I need.

There it is, my idea of what needs to change on the XBOX 360. What would you change? Would you agree with my controller complaints, or stay in the past with your atari sticks?

BTW, I'll post some pics of my personal modded 360 when it's finished.