A Salvo From the 360

As in the real world, the Xbox 360 appears to have more fans amongst our writers. So, in true underhanded Microsoft fashion, Jo and Alex have decided to gang up on the other consoles. We were all reticent about agreeing to it until they started threatening us. Something about a chainsaw mounted on a machine gun…

Unlike the PS3’s snooty elitism or the Wii’s grandma-friendly demeanor, the Xbox 360 appeals to me: The Ex-Fratboy. That’s right, I don’t smoke hashish and I don’t read Chaucer. What I do is drink whiskey and kill bad guys, and that’s what the Xbox has been about from the start.

The original Xbox came in to the market with an Ali-style rope-a-dope, and it served its purpose well. It was meant to tire the other systems out by taking away some exclusive titles while throwing a few well-timed punches of its own in the forms of Halo, Ninja Gaiden and KOTOR. With the 360, Microsoft comes off the ropes and really starts to pummel its worn out foes.

And the other consoles know it. While I wasn’t a Fratboy, I do like me my Xbox. I’m a gamer at heart and out of all the next-gen consoles, the Xbox is the only traditional “gamer” console. Nintendo’s Wii admittedly left the gamers out in the cold – creating a toy that was meant to be shared by the family. Meanwhile, Sony overshot the traditional gamers, creating a system that was meant to be elite and sophisticated – which turned into prohibitively expensive. It might have been different if the PS3 had come out with some games to make one fork over the cash for it, but they didn’t.

With console exclusives such as Halo 3, Oblivion, Mass Effect, Ninja Gaiden 2, and the Gears of War series, the Xbox 360 welcomes the traditional gamer to the next generation. All of these titles were revolutionary in their own way, but they also held true to the “Those guys over there are bad so you should kill them,” theory of gaming. I made my bones with the original NES, and I was a die-hard Nintendo fan through the N64. I made the difficult decision to switch to the Xbox when it came out, and now with the 360 I feel that my decision was justified.

I feel the same way, and not just because of the games. The fact of the matter is that Microsoft hasn’t left its gamers wanting, hoping on blind faith that problems with the system will magically get repaired. You see, Xbox fans don’t believe in Big Foot, and we don’t leave cookies out for Santa. We are a people of instant gratification and Xbox provides just that. With the Wii, gamers are still waiting faithfully for a fix to their (half-assed) internet system. And as far as Sony’s financial outlook goes, PS3 owners are just taking on faith that the console is still going to exist in the next few months. FINALLY, after waiting for so long, the games that are going to make its purchasers happy, and perhaps attract some new fans, are emerging (a little late in my humble opinion).
The Xbox has been solid from the start. Sure there were red ring issues – but Microsoft knows how to handle these kinds of problems. They are used to getting a product out and fixing it later – quickly. And they have. The red rings aren’t nearly as prevalent as they were at launch, and Microsoft still offers a 3 year warranty on all 360s for any red ring-o-death issues. Microsoft saw the problem, fixed it, and made their fans happy. While Nintendo and Sony are asking for our faith, Microsoft is gaining our trust.

I would like to elaborate on my earlier “half-assed” comment concerning the Wii’s online capability. Xbox Live has been much maligned for being a singularly offensive and intolerant environment. I can’t argue with that. 10 year old kids have hurled epithets at me that made my eyes roll into my head and blood shoot out my nose. However, this staggering degree of closed-minded bigotry is not common to every game played on Xbox Live, however.

After recovering from the ego-shattering shame spiral I was sent into while playing Halo 3 online, I decided to try my hand at the Gears of War 2 multiplayer system. To my delight, the douchebaggery was much reduced, and the experience of playing AND TALKING with other gamers was quite enjoyable. One of the most fun and important aspects of online gaming is the ability to chat with the fellow players. Often I am teaming up with my fellow beer-swilling frat brothers, and being able to catch up on our various states of unemployment is important to me (while chain-sawing Locust in half!)

So while you can complain about the Xbox’s online play sucking because of the idiot gamers out there, you have to realize that this is something where you take the good, with the bad. And the good parts of Xbox’s online system outweigh the bad parts of the Wii’s. Besides, if you didn’t have annoying, vile-mouthed, pre-pubescent punks pwning n00bs to practice your head shots on, the experience would be a lot less enjoyable!

Now that we beat up the “baby bear” as Kink puts it, we thought it was time to take on “big brother bear.” Everyone who owns a PS3 rationalizes it the same two ways: The graphics are better, and it has a Blu-ray player! First, the graphics issue. On paper the PS3 has more processing power than the 360, but this doesn’t necessarily translate to better graphics. Without going into far too much technical detail, the graphics processing unit on the Xbox is more powerful and easier to take advantage of. Therefore it can perform in ways that the PS3’s graphics unit can’t. When people say that the PS3 is more “powerful” than the 360, the are referring to the 8 dedicated SPU’s in the PS3 versus the 3 general purpose CPU’s found in the 360, neither of which have much to do with graphics. These SPU’s are what make the PS3 so difficult to program for, however, and consequently games that are available on both platforms are almost universally more bug-ridden on the PS3. A more powerful system doesn’t mean a damn thing if it comes at the expense of gameplay.

Next, the Blu-ray player. Sony took a huge risk in backing Blu-ray, and it has paid off since Blu-ray won the format war. However, this lovely little component adds hundreds of dollars of per-unit price to the Playstation, and is the single biggest reason that Sony loses money on every console sold.

That being said, right now Blu-ray is also the biggest reason to actually go out and buy a PS3. And Sony knows it. It’s what they’ve been trumpeting while they’re trying to get their third party support and games in line. “Yeah, you don’t have games to play right now, but LOOK! A Blu-ray player! Oooo!” I’m not interested in shiny things. I want games dammit. The fact that they didn’t strip the Blu-ray out of the system and add a DVD player instead to cut down on costs proves that. They knew they couldn’t sell the gaming component of the system alone, there are not enough games to support it. In the end, Blu-ray capability should be a secondary consideration for a gaming system, and not the reason you purchase it.

So where does that leave us? With the Xbox – which is where we started. In addition to being an ex-fratboy, I’m also a trained engineer. The Xbox has the best hours-of-fun-per-dollar-spent ratio, and that is the single biggest reason to buy one. I have almost 3 times as many games for the Xbox as I do for the Wii, and have spent at least that much more time playing the 360. That doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy the Wii when I fire it up, it just means that the Xbox is my console of choice. You know what you’re getting with a 360. It’s not a retirement home accessory, nor is it an expensive Blu-ray player that happens to play games. It’s a damn fine gaming system that will still play your DVDs for you. What more do you need? Besides, if I’m trying to decide between buying a game for my PS3 and my Xbox, the 360 always wins – I have to build up my gamer score!! Now where’s my hashish? I’ll need it to get through this volume of Chaucer. . .