Our new Xbox360 arrived in the mail this week and it’s all setup – this is our first real HD device, and the included videos look really nice at 720p. The Xbox feels like a device that was for the most part designed well (using Apple of the gold standard), but there are some ridiculous design experiences. For example, when signing up for my gamertag, I have to “type” in all my information through the controller. That in itself is frustrating, but what’s absolutely infuriating is that if you accidentally press the wrong button on the controller, you’ll have to “type” everything again. The experience is also a lot like Vista’s UAC – are you SURE you want to quit? Really SURE??

The only Xbox game that I have is Fable, which isn’t even a 360 game! I played it for a bit, but the graphics look a bit backwards (since it’s in 480p and not properly widescreen). Instead, I’ve been playing Xbox Live Arcade games. My hard drive came preloaded with about 15 arcade games (mostly trial versions) and a couple of demos. I also downloaded a few arcade games and demos from Live. This has been really fun and I spend most of my time doing this, just trying out new games and seeing what the Xbox360 games are like (and worth buying). Although I’ve noticed that there are A LOT of on-the-rails shooters on XBLA. They should just make 1 engine and let you download different “themes” that represent each “game”.

The flip side to the online experience is that I feel like I’m in a mall all the time. There are a lot of ads, and I have to pay for everything. It almost makes me want to create a blog listing all the free (worthwhile) stuff on Live. Although, I think there are a few arcade games that I will be willing to spend money Microsoft points on in the future.

What has impressed me the most, and I didn’t really think about this before making the purchase, is the Xbox’s media extender capability. Through it, I have access to the media on my computer, such as music, photos, and videos. Now I can consume everything through my HDTV easily without having to run cables or buying a HTPC. Although, Media Center doesn’t seem to scale properly given the sheer enormity of my music and photography collections (and they really need an auto-rotate feature).

Posted by Kevin in Blogs Tags: games, microsoft, xbox