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The Saint Returns

The developer behind this contraption is Wild Tangent, best known for its web-based online games. Wild Tangent should be no stranger to Microsoft as its founding father Alex St. John helped to create DirectX. Now after a full circle of travel, Alex St. John’s project company is now using DirectX to create what looks to be the first Xbox application.

Wild Tangent’s work on the Xbox Music Mixer is really just an extension of some of its existing work. For example, the Xbox Music Mixer comes with scores of visualizers that morph and react to the music. Many of the 2D visualizers resemble those currently found in Windows Media Player, and many of the 3D visualizers are similar to Wild Tangent’s array of sassy dancers.

Getting the XSN demo.

If visualizers aren’t your thing, then perhaps a slideshow of your own handpicked images are more to your liking. Just like how MP3s can be transferred from your PC to the Xbox, you can send your most exotic pictures onto the Xbox hard drive to create a slideshow to accompany the music.

You can also create your own music video by mixing and meshing in a combination of media. To our great disappointment, you cannot import your own videos for playback on the Xbox. While it’s understandable that Microsoft could not provide support for MPEG-4 compressed videos due to licensing fees and other issues, it baffles us why “classic” formats such as MPEG-1 couldn’t be imported just like picture and music files. As small consolation, over an hour of miscellaneous video is included for those who like to see things move. Clearly the capability for video is there, so it’s unknown to as exactly why Wild Tangent (or Microsoft) chose not to put the power into the users hands. Perhaps Microsoft has plans for an Xbox Video Player?

Finally, no new Microsoft Xbox product would be complete without mentioning some form of Xbox Live integration. The Xbox Music Mixer will have the ability to connect to Xbox Live to download new music, visual effects, and karaoke songs. There was no mention of charges for downloading new music, though one could expect that some form of online music purchase is in the planning stages.

The CDDB feature will also have to be kept updated by Xbox Live, though an alternative will be presented via updates through demo discs (similar to how the Dead or Alive 3 booster was distributed).