Ensight - Jeremy Wright’s Personal Blog

Xbox 360 Impressions

by Jeremy Wright on March 13th, 2006

Well, everyone has an opinion on the Xbox 360. But, as a proud new owner, I figured I’d share my perspective on how I feel about it. Forgetting all the “which is better the 360 or the PS3 or the Revolution” crap. What has *my* experience been with the 360, over the last 38 hours or so?

Here are my thoughts on the good and the bad. I’ll start with the bad first, since there are so few things I don’t like so far:

The Bad

Hard to find: I’ve actually managed to find Core products in more and more stores over the last 2 weeks. Most of the stores in metropolitan areas seem to have 1-2 of them now, or at least there are some available in the city. Nobody seems to have Premium ones left, though, and they’re only getting 1-2 per week, which isn’t keeping up. In truth, I bought one of the last 360s for this month in my entire province… But then I’m not in a metropolitan area either ;-)

LOUD: When playing games, the 360 is LOUD. If you’ve got the volume up loud enough to hear, you won’t even notice it, but when you first turn it on it can be shockingly loud. I mean, I’m not used to hearing a console at the same volume as a PC (and that’s about how loud it is).

Downloads: Downloads kickass. More on that later. I just thought it’d make sense to download the latest 500MB demo in the background, instead of needing to tie up the 360 for an hour, y’know?

Expensive: All told, I spent more than 1000$ on the 360 (Canadian). Of course, I got everything I’ll need for more than 2 years, but that’s not the point, this is the most expensive console I’ve ever bought (and I’ve bought quite a few). Typically I’d budget 500-600$ for a console. This was way beyond that. But, what did my 1K buy me? Core console, hard drive, remote, wireless adapter (which is kickass), 2 games (perfect dark zero and burnout), an extra wireless controller, play and charge kit (to, well, charge the controller while playing), Xbox Live pack, Xbox Live Marketplace Points and some other minor goodies. To be honest, I expected to spend 700-800$. Part of the discrepancy is probably the exchange rate (I may have been thinking in US dollars), but this is still a big buy.

The Good

Okay, those are the “bad”. What’s the good?

Wireless controllers: This might sound silly. A friend of mine was over last night and said “who cares? I don’t really notice the wires, it’s not like I’m dancing while I’m playing”. But y’know what, I’ve already had several occasions where I appreciated the wireless. One was when I was playing an Xbox Live game and someone came to the door. I was able to park my car somewhere safe, walk to the door, chat for a few minutes and not miss a beat of the action (voice chat was still working). The other was while downloading a 600MB demo, I just kept the controller beside my desk, so I could periodically check on how the download was doing. No, wireless isn’t going to change your life, but it’s… freeing. You can sit wherever you want in the living room. You don’t need to wrap up wires when you’re done playing. It’s just… nice. I love them.

Xbox Live Arcade: Okay, I’m addicted to Geometry Wars. I’ve only hit about 300K as my max score, but I love it. And the ability to download silly games like Marble Blast for like 5$ is awesome. Lots of these are games Shannon will like too, which is great.

Xbox Live Marketplace: This is even better. Downloading demos. Downloading trailers. I love it! To me, this is one of the key benefits of the 360. Sure, spending money on silly things like badges and whatever sucks. So I don’t. I just grab the gobs of free content and love every minute of it.

Games: Both of the games I bought, as well as every demo I’ve played, have been awesome. I love Burnout. The graphics aren’t that much different than the Xbox. Perfect Dark looks amazing. The Outfit will be an awesome game. I’ll probably pick up Call of Duty 2 based on the demo as well. Gaming is all about the games, and so far there are some great ones on the 360, with plenty more to come (I might actually pick up Dead Rising, because it looks like Sean of the Dead, heh).

Overall

Overall I’m very happy. I’m not happy about the pricetag, but I’ve been without a gaming system for about 4 months now, and while I was getting used to it, the 360 hasn’t disappointed in any way. Do I feel like there’s been a quantum leap in gaming? No. But that’s largely because the Xbox was, to me, a great package. This is a fairly big improvement on it. If I hadn’t owned an Xbox, though, Xbox Live would have floored me.

I’m looking forward to meeting up with friends on Live, having some good times and generally just being a casual / social gamer. I don’t have time for anything more, but I’m quite confident that as long as Microsoft doesn’t go bankrupt, there’ll be lots of great games for me to play over the next 5 years, and I’m doubtful that I’ll regret my decision to choose the 360 over other consoles that still have no release date.

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