"Microsoft's Xbox team was sure of one thing when it set out to design a new console: If the system won the approval of Japanese consumers, then others would love it as well.
The goal sounded simple enough, but it was something Microsoft had failed at before. The company has sold only 1.7 million original Xbox consoles in Japan, where gamers deplored the system as too brash and bulky.
"You couldn't get it through the door of apartments in a lot of places," joked Peter Moore, a corporate vice president in the Xbox division. "
Each design firm Microsoft had approached initially tried to mimic the aggressive feel of the original Xbox. The Xbox team had to steer the firms in the opposite direction, using phrases like, "Less Hulk, more Bruce Lee."
Jonathan Hayes has had the biggest hand in designing the next Xbox machine. He works at Microsoft and has spent the past two years shepherding the design process for Xbox 360.
"They'd say, 'OK, Xbox was this much testosterone and this much raw brute force last generation, so it's going to be even angrier and have more machismo in the next,' " Hayes said. "It took us a little while in every case to instruct the partner that no, we were going to go somewhere different."
from The story behind new Xbox design