XBOX 360 Zero Hour Event

By Felix Lung
Krunker.com

There I was tonight – standing in line at 8:59pm – watching the seconds tick by, waiting in anticipation for the Xbox 360 to be officially launched at 9pm PST. 40 seconds.. 39 seconds.. 38.. tick tock tick tock.. As I stood there among the thousands that had braved the trek to Palmdale, CA, I couldn’t help but think about the last 12+ hours of this incredible day.

8am:
I roll out of bed and get dressed for my long day in the middle of nowhere. I was one of the lucky few who got tickets to attend the Zero Hour Event being held by Microsoft in Palmdale California. Since I’m coming from Los Angeles, my trek isn’t nearly as long as some people who actually flew from other states to attend this event. Zero Hour actually began the night before and thousands showed up to play games all through the night. I wasn’t quite so ready to head out to Palmdale on a Sunday night and hence I decided to head out early Monday morning.

My day actually started a bit late since I was planning on leaving at around 6am. Well as you can tell, that didn’t happen but 8:30am would have to do instead. Luckily the 405 N was pretty clear on this beautiful Monday morning. The travel would be very straightforward for me. Hop on the 405 North, then on to the 5 North and finally onto the 14 North. 60+ miles later, I would be at my destination – Zero Hour in Palmdale.

9:30am:
I’m now on Highway 14 and I decide to take some pictures of what it looks like out here. If you don’t believe that this is in the middle of nowhere, check out these pictures. Heck I was practically next door to the Mojave Desert!

10:30am:
I finally come across the entrance to the Zero Hour Event. As many of you already know, Zero Hour was being held in a large hangar bay. While entering the area, I was stopped no less than three different times by cops checking for my Xbox 360 wristband. Was I entering Area 51 or Zero Hour??? At one point, a police officer asked if I was carrying fire arms or anything explosive. “No sir, I’m just here to purchase an Xbox 360 sir.”

I finally park my car and come to the entrance – the entrance of hell if you ask me.

You’re not allowed to bring in any bags whatsoever. No handbags, no backpacks, no NOTHING. You have to take everything out of your pockets and walk through a metal detector. Honestly, the security at the Zero Hour event was heavier than at our nations’ airports. I’m not sure what’s sadder actually. Oh well.

After 15 minutes through security, I am finally through and at Zero Hour. There are people walking all around carrying accessories, games and t-shirts and Zero Hour launch sweat shirts.

11am:

I take a walk inside and start snapping up pictures. The entire hangar bay is awash in green lighting making for a very eerie effect even during the daytime.

The interior of the hangar is filled with Xbox 360 consoles all placed in circular groups of approximately four apiece. Every grouping of four or so Xbox 360 consoles is networked together allowing you to play the people around you on Xbox Live.

Every Xbox 360 console is connected to a Samsung HDTV LCD Television (And man they are SWEET!).

At every station are one to two white beanbags which we were allowed to take home later on in the evening. Yup – I have two of them sitting in my apartment as I write this blog now. Anyhow, you sit on the beanbags while you play the video games on the console. It’s actually a really great setup if you ask me. It’s one big slumber party!

Game wise, Microsoft had practically every single launch title featured here at Zero Hour. Some games had more available consoles than others (e.g. Call of Duty had approximately 16 consoles and they were all filled!).

Anyone who wanted a break from gaming could sit at the movie kiosks littered around the perimeter of the area. There they could sit back and watch any number of movies being played back on an Xbox 360 console.

If you wanted some fresh air, you could also walk outside and check out the gladiator style area that was set up to allow you to bash your friends. You could also walk on over to the refreshment area and pick up a bottle of soda for three bucks. Man that was expensive.

11:30am:
I walk on over to the Xbox 360 purchase area being manned by BestBuy (They must have made a killing tonight!).

I fill out a form with my name and address and get in line to purchase the console and any games and accessories that might also interest me. The games and accessories are given at the time of purchase but the consoles won’t be made available until 9pm PST (timed to coincide the 12am launch on the east coast).

Ok, so I purchase one title for now and head on back to my car to drop some stuff off. Leaving the event is every bit as complex as getting in. You need to empty your pockets and go through another metal detector. Microsoft really doesn’t want you to leave the premises with wired Xbox 360 controllers or games or really anything.

12 pm – 5pm:
For the next five hours, I walk around the complex and check out all the games and demos. At every demonstration, you have a chance at getting free t-shirts and various other goodies. Heck it reminded me of the good old Internet conference days where one could get goodies all day long. I think I amassed about 10 t-shirts and 3 beanie caps today.

Right in the middle of the hangar bay was the Xbox 360 Room to Room Entertainment section where the 360 was being showcased in conjunction with the Microsoft Media Center PC.

As many of you know, the Xbox 360 has a built in MCE Extender which is FAR better than the original Xbox extender. Heck it better be since the original Xbox extender loaded from a CD and had to work off a lousy Pentium processor.

The new Xbox 360 Media Center Extender (MCX) was being showcased on a large plasma display and boy – it was beautiful to see. Here were some observations:

• You can stream recorded HD from MCE 2005 to the Xbox 360. It preserves audio and digital quality
• You can easily stream copyrighted television content from the MCE box to the 360 just like in current extenders
• The Xbox 360 renders most of the display so there’s actually very little burden on the MCE system itself
• You still can not stream DVDs from the MCE to an Xbox 360
• While you’re using the MCX feature on the 360, the Xbox 360 dashboard is still active so you can receive messages, see friends come on and off the network etc.

Don’t have a Media Center? No problem. The Xbox 360 can tap into networked Windows XP machines and stream music and photos to your console. Unfortunately you can not stream videos from an XP machine; only from Media Center PCs.

I also found out that the iPod would work with the 360. You can connect the iPod to the 360 via the USB cable and use the 360 to play your iPods playlists. Sony PSPs would supposedly also be able to connect to the 360 allowing you to stream photos and music from the PSP to the 360. Of course I didn’t actually see this done so I would be interested to see this work.

As the day went by, there were little side shows here and there. Up near the entrance there was a dance being held by several scantily clad women (no surprise there).

Ah yes another highlight of the day? Standing in line to get autographs from G4’s Morgan Webb and Adam Sessler. Morgan is tall and well.. Adam is a bit short.

This was followed by a dance group up on the main stage which then led to a dance off. Oh my goodness… geeks being asked to partake in a dance off. I felt like I was watching Dance 360 here folks (hmm 360….). Six men from the crowd decided to attend the dance off. There was even an Asian guy from NYC in it, so I of course being from NYC had to root for this guy. That is until I watched him dance – umm.. NEXT!!!

Watch a demo, get t-shirts, walk around, go to a game console here and there and repeat. That was my afternoon.

6pm:
At around 6ish, I finally get a chance to sit down and play a game of Call of Duty 2. Seriously, some people were waiting for hours to play this game. I certainly did not get a chance to play the game until now. Of course 20 minutes into the game, a line begins to form near me. Just great! I wonder what this is all about. Whenever you see a line at an event like this, you have to know what’s going on because you might be able to get free goodies. I do a little inquiring and it turns out that people are lining up to receive their Xbox consoles. My goodness people – the consoles don’t arrive until 9pm and you’re already lining up at 6:30? This isn’t the Revenge of the Sith folks!! Ok.. I might as well join in otherwise I’d be here all night long.

So I take 2 bean bags and lie down for the next 2.5 hours and wait.. and wait..

7-8:50pm:
I doze in and out of consciousness during this time. It’s actually quite hard to sleep when you consider there are a few thousand people all around you AND you have hundreds of Xbox 360 consoles playing at the same time. Yet, I manage to catch some ZZZ’s.

8:51 – 8:59pm:
Everyone gets up and begins to wait in anticipation. How would they introduce the Xbox’s? We’d soon find out….

Tick tock tick tock..

Then all of a sudden the main hangar doors open and three large BestBuy semi’s roll in under police escort.

That’s right – they drive the semi’s into the complex up towards the back of the Hangar. Woo weee.. the excitement builds.. I just can’t wait! The line starts to bunch up and we move on up. A few feet here and there.. and the clock winds down.

9pm:
That’s it! The clock hits 9pm and the consoles are now being handed out. 15 minutes later, I have the console in my hand and the box is actually rather heavy. I start making my way out of the hangar making sure to grab two bean bags for good measure. I walk outside only to find yet another line to get out of the complex. Sheesh, I should have realized this.

9:45pm:
I’m finally out of the complex and in my car. Wow.. the Xbox 360 console is now in my car. What should I do? Should I install it now? Should I sell it on Ebay? Should I just call up all of my friends and gloat? Or perhaps, I will sit down and write down my adventure here on Krunker and then relax a bit before opening up my new toy for 2005. Yeah, I think I’ll do that instead.

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