Water Cooler Games served as the web's primary forum for "videogames with an agenda" — coverage of the uses of video games in advertising, politics, education, and other everyday activities, outside the sphere of entertainment.
The site was maintained at watercoolergames.org from 2003-2009, where it was edited by myself and Gonzalo Frasca. It is now archived here in full.
I fell upon the Xavix XaviXPORT at Best Buy this week. It's a small game console that seems to be focused on games that use wireless, external peripheral controllers. More specifically, XaviXPORT seems to be designed for sports games; currently, they offer a bowling game with green wireless bowling ball, a baseball game with wireless bat, and a tennis game with wireless racquet. There's little question that Xavix hopes to benefit from the growing market for videogames that engender physical activity, such as Yourself! Fitness (on WCG: 1, 2) and DDR. XaviXPORT runs a borderline-reasonable US$79.99 retail, and each of the games costs US$49.99 (including the required peripheral). It's hard to tell from the screenshots how these games measure up in terms of graphical and interactive quality, but I feel certain that they are considerably less sophisticated than other console games.
In addition to having the worst product name in recent memory, Xavix also seems to have great expectations, promising a line of products in the Entertainment, Home, and Education categories as well. Their marketing pitch foreshadows evertying "from interactive video games that respond to your physical movements, to motion sensitive home security solutions." Sounds like a bit of a stretch, but I have to admit that I do love the idea of a wireless bowling ball.
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