"Jeff Minter is one of the videogame industry's true eccentrics - a man who has followed his own agenda for the last twenty years, even if that has meant going off in a completely different direction to everyone else (Tempest 3000 for the ill-fated Nuon device to pluck out one example). But strangely, his experiments with various 'light synthesiser' applications throughout the years may well have finally brought him in line with mainstream thinking. At a time when console manufacturers are desperate for their latest machines to be appreciated as allround audiovisual entertainment centres rather than just games machines (Nintendo excluded, of course), Microsoft is embedding Neon, the latest version of Minter's hypnotic light synth software, onto the Xbox 360.

It all fits. As the concept of what actually constitutes a game evolves in the digital, high-defintion, music-streaming, movie downloading, broadband era, tools like this will become more commonplace and more accepted - you can see this in everything from Sing Star to Elektroplankton. Perhaps Minter's light 'games' didn't make much sense to mainstream users ten years ago, but now, with our huge HD LCD displays and Dolby Digital EX surround sound systems, they'll become another form of casual interactive entertainment. When Xbox 360 was announced J Allard rejected claims that the console was intended as a self-contained hub for all forms of digital media, but he does want it to be seen as a 'digital amplifier' - a means of getting streaming music, video, etc, from a PC or MP3 player to your home theatre set-up. Why not add some amazing light shows in the process?

Anyway, I recently got a few questions to Minter about the Xbox 360 version of Neon, and here's what he had to say." [more]