December 04, 2005
Xbox 360 Early Thoughts
I've been spending a lot of time with the Xbox 360 since it showed up a couple of weeks ago, and I have to say, I am thoroughly impressed with what Microsoft has done with this system. A lot of mainstream publications have been complaining about the 360 as of late, mostly because of faulty hardware reports and systems being impossible to find at retail, but I think they're missing the point entirely. You only need to mess around with the 360 dashboard for a few hours before it becomes abundantly clear that this machine represents a huge step forward in gaming. With the original Xbox, I wasn't ever really convinced Microsoft knew what they were doing, but this time around, I'm starting to understand their vision, and so far, I like what I see very much.
I still don't believe the 360 has much of a chance of winning this generation (momentum alone should keep Sony on top at least through the next round), but if they keep their focus and continue to improve upon the foundation they've built, I can see them becoming a very serious contender for Sony's crown in the future. I'm willing to bet the PS3's UI won't hold a candle to the 360's, and I don't think it's too much of a stretch to say Sony'll -never- have anything as cool and complete as Xbox Live. If they don't wisen up and start paying closer attention to what Microsoft is doing, their empire is going to crumble.
BTW, while we're on the subject of Xbox 360 -- if you haven't set yours up to communicate with your PC to stream music from your music library, you need to do it NOW. I foolishly waited until earlier this evening to do so (I don't have Windows XP Media Center edition, so I had to set it up via Windows Media Connect), but the entire process took all of 30 seconds and before I knew it, I had instant access to my entire music collection -- a far cry from the crappy "wait 15 minutes for your one CD to burn and then rename all the files yourself" situation on the original Xbox. It's got full support for ID3 tags and playlists and all that, and best of all, you can access it from just about anywhere -- within any game, during a voice chat, watching a video, etc. It's incredible. I haven't tried it with an EA game yet, but if this means the death of EA Trax, then I'm gonna be even more excited.
Oh, one last totally unrelated thing before I go -- today (Dec. 4) marks five years since I've been living in Japan. Five years! That's one-sixth of my entire life. I wonder where I'll be five years from now?
In any case, kore kara mo yoroshiku! And thanks for reading. ^^
Posted by john tv at December 4, 2005 01:16 AM