Xbox Redux – I did a 180 (x2)!
Tuesday June 6, 2006 at 11:07 am | Filed under Gadgetry, Gaming, Mac
After a bunch of thought about what I saw at E3 this year I decided to go back to my original plan when my Xbox died and turned in my store credit at Best Buy for an Xbox 360. With a couple of gift cards left over from the holidays I had nearly $300 to put towards the purchase. That made a pretty big dent, but of course, I had to buy an extra controller and some battery packs for the wireless (they’re SWEET!) controllers. So I got outta there spending about $100. Not bad for a next gen gaming system.
Don’t get me wrong, the PS3 is going to be amazing, and I’ll have one someday, but it won’t be the day it comes out. I think it would be a smarter move to give them some time to work out some bugs and get some great games put out for the system. Then maybe the following summer I’ll pick one up, but we’ll see how it’s received and how the luanch goes. $600 is a lot to throw down for a system, blu ray or not. The PS3 purchase may slide to when I have a TV and there are games out there that utilize 1080p.
I’ve been really impressed with the 360. There still aren’t a lot of games available, I think there are 30-40 or so that are out right now (more if you count the ones you can download online), but there should be close to 100 out by the holiday season. More impressive than the horsepower of the sytem, the gorgeous graphics and great gameplay is something that is expected. What has impressed me more is the way that it’s all tied together in the community called Xbox live. This was one of the things that I loved about the previous generation, and it got a whole lot better this time around. You can download all kinds of content through the service including: demos of games so you can “try before you buy,” full versions of old-school arcade games that have multi-player aspects added to them, movie trailers, and more. The downloadable games are in something called the Xbox Live Arcade, and it’s pretty addicting. I’ve been playing Uno with some friends online as well as some complete strangers. Yeah, I know… Uno. Go outside Joe! But really, it’s pretty cool with teh sense of community that’s built into it. Two things specifically make it great: Achievements and Gamer Score. Every Xbox 360 title has certain 
achievements that you can do that have a point value assigned to them. For example, if you play 40 “draw two” cards in Uno over the course of your playing career, you unlock an achievement and you get 15 points added to your gamer score. My Gamerscore is currently 410. My “Gamercard” is pictured to the right.
Being a mac guy, I had my concerns about how the 360 will interact with my computers over my network, if at all. Luckily, I have found quite a few little apps that make the 360 talk to macs. With Connect360, I can stream music from any mac on my network, listening to anything in iTunes, including playlists, while I play games both online and offline. It also lets me view photos that I have in iPhoto. Pretty slick for quick slideshows on the big screen.
There’s also some really cool 3rd party web tools that interface with the 360, but one in particular I have to point out. My 360 actually has a blog about me! It makes an entry daily (which is more than I can say for me on this blog) re-capping what I’ve played and how my Gamerscore is progressing. Check it out!
If you ever end up with a 360, send me a friend request! I’m known as “The Chickening” on Xbox Live!
One Response to “Xbox Redux – I did a 180 (x2)!”
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Danny Says:
June 12th, 2006 at 11:30 pmThe blog is hilarious. I particularly like the entries on days you didn’t play. I wonder how long they’ll keep it up. Eventually it’s going to get quite large and require more servers, which equals more money…which the last time I checked, Bill Gates likes to put in his pockets (only to give it away to an impoverished nation). Enjoy your gaming!
P.S. Miss you at FollowF1.com fantasy!
