As I was one of the lucky ones to have preordered early enough for my Xbox 360 Premium package, I played around with it last night and have a few initial thoughts.
First and foremost – what sticks out is that it isn’t about the games. Microsoft has made it perfectly clear this generation of game consoles will serve as media hubs, bringing together all forms of media and interactivity. Case in point – the Xbox Live Marketplace, arguably the coolest innovation of the console and one of the brightest ideas to have been brought into the living room.
The Xbox Live Marketplace was heavily hyped by Microsoft when the console was unveiled back in May. At the time, people wanted to be wowed by the games and the graphics, and the takeaway from E3 was that the 360 wasn’t much an improvement from the original Xbox. The gaming community didn’t care about VelocityGirl making new maps and logos for Tony Hawk and selling them on Xbox Live. People didn’t want to be nickeled and dimed for content, especially when the rumor was games would be approaching $60 each.
Now that I’ve spent some time with my Xbox 360, I have to say J Allard was right all along. I have three games – Project Gotham Racing 3, Kameo, and Perfect Dark Zero – but I think the majority of my time was navigating through the lists of available themes, pictures, Xbox Live Arcade games, and other media. There was a lot of free content, and it’s totally cool to have the Narnia trailer, for instance, on demand, downloaded to the Xbox 360 hard drive and in 720p high definition. I also liked all the customization available in terms of themes and gamer pictures. I went through the available themes and tried them all out, sticking to the PGR3 theme as my current choice.
The interactivity with Windows XP is flawless. All I had to do was download a plugin on my PC and the Xbox 360 found it on my network. When the plugin is first installed, it finds the standard My Document folders and makes them shared for the 360 (or other Media Center devices). I keep my music and videos on a separate drive, so I shared that as well. The cool thing is, on the Xbox 360, it doesn’t care where the music is. There’s no directory structure. It simply lists all music it finds on those shared drives and directories and arranges them by artist, by song, or by album. Completely awesome, especially when you don’t want to wade through directories to find that one song. The visualization is also awesome, something that gamers have always wanted but never was realized fully since the days of the Nuon (remember that?).
And then there is the marketplace itself. As J Allard predicted, this is totally addictive. I bought 2000 gamer points right off the bat to use as I perused the listings of available content. I kinda felt like a kid getting a roll of quarters from their parents to use however they wanted at an arcade. I bought the full version of Geometry Wars Evolved, which is cool. They also offer free demos for download, which I plan to use in order to buy more Arcade titles. It’s an awesome concept that never seemed like it fit within the previous Xbox Live infrastructure, but seems right at home here. I also spent 60 points on a Chicago Bears gamer picture, which was a complete waste. But hey, you live and you learn. I have to admit I’d probably have bought one or more Themes available, but they aren’t given any preview, at least enough to warrant a 150 point purchase.
Other thoughts on the 360:
* Halo 2 looks amazing. During the cut scenes it’s pretty hard to see this was an original Xbox title.
* The power supply is huge, but not so much as to be a nuisance. It would have been nice if the cord between the console and power supply were longer, so I could position it away from my other wires.
* The fan on the console is really loud. I can hear it above the sound coming from my stereo. And the console runs hot hot hot! I was surprised at how hot the discs got after several minutes of playing.
* Using the wireless controller to turn on and off the console is the greatest thing since sliced bread.
So all in all, I’m definitely convinced the Xbox 360 is the real deal. With all its other functions, it really ups the ante for future game consoles. Now I can’t wait to go home and try out more of those Xbox Live Arcade titles!
