Last week I got an Xbox 360.  I’m such a slave to gadgets, it’s so bad!  When the original Xbox came out, I resisted until after the first price drop.  The Wife got me the Xbox for Father’s Day.  Note that I had been a father for all of a month at that point, but I still qualified.

This time out, I was determined NOT to put forth much effort in obtaining one.  I didn’t pre-order to slap down any money to reserve one.  I just would occasionally check with various stores when I happened to be near one to see if they had any in stock.  My local Game Crazy(tm) had one last Wednesday, so just picked it up.

First impressions are that PGR3 look pretty good on the ol’ high-def TV.  I’ve only played with it for a couple hours in aggregate so far, and I only have 2 games (PGR3 & Tiger Woods).

Some early observations:

  • The Windows Media Connect support for media files is nice to have.  I have a Roku device upstairs that I use to stream music to the living room.  Now I have the same access to the music in the downstairs HDTV room.  Nice.
  • The WMC music UI scales for shit.  God help you if you have 300 unique artists to scroll through.  I don’t even want to try scrolling through song titles.
  • I love – LOVE – the wireless remote and that it turns on/off the console VIA RF (RF!) as well as IR!
  • The optical out port on the A/V cable does not hold the toslink cable very well.  Lame.
  • The boot sound scared Andrew the first time he heard it.

Overall, an improvement over the original Xbox.  Heck, it’d better be.  So far, unfortunately, the game selection has been less than inspiring.  I’m sure it will improve over time.  Unfortunately, the game library for the PSP really didn’t.  Sony has really under-performed with its handheld console.  The UMD movie format is all but dead.  And the PS3 will likely not see US shores until 2007.  This should be interesting.

Meanwhile, I’m looking to unload my Xbox and associated games and accessories.  Drop me a line if you’re interested.