I didn't like the 360 before I picked mine up. I played the COD2 demo in the store and wasn't impressed, I saw screens and wasn't impressed, I thought all of MS's HD, Live, interface hype was crap. After spending a day with the machine I realized though that my initial and very shallow impressions were wrong. As a gaming machine the 360 is by far the best there's ever been. The contrller is ace, the Live support is golden, and the 3 games I picked up for it are very very fun.
The graphics are very nice (I don't recall billboard trees in PGR ... what I do recall are fully animated mesh bystanders ... hundreds of them made from at least 1,000 polys running around the sidelines) ... but they aren't all you're paying for with this system. Microsoft has made the smoothest gaming experience yet and that's what's so great about the 360. I think my favorite game on it is the $5 Geometry Wars ... and for all intents and purposes it could be made on the origial Playstation I'd imagine.
Then there's the fact that they are supporting smaller independent games. This is awesome! Say what you want about Microsoft but on Live Arcade they give higher than 50% royalties and you also maintain your IP. That's better than any portal for PC games and your game sells 8X better on Live Arcade than a typical PC equivalent.
But back to the machine ... the graphics are great although they aren't going to blow you completely away if you've played the latest PC games, however the experience of gameplaying on the 360 is 10 fold smoother than that of any other platform and you can pick up a wireless controller and kick back anywhere in your living room, connect to Live and play co-op or versus with someone on PDZ while chatting with them, or play with up to 4 pals in the room ... and basically do all of this without hassling with software or sitting rigidly in a chair staring at a screen 6 inches away.
It's smooth and fun like no gaming platform has been before it. All basically without any big knockout punch (gimmick?) like a god processor or a techno wand. Not really dogging on Sony or Nintendo because I'll pick up those systems and surely enjoy them as well. However, MS has done a respectable job and I personally haven't played games this much in quite a while.
The graphics are very nice (I don't recall billboard trees in PGR ... what I do recall are fully animated mesh bystanders ... hundreds of them made from at least 1,000 polys running around the sidelines) ... but they aren't all you're paying for with this system. Microsoft has made the smoothest gaming experience yet and that's what's so great about the 360. I think my favorite game on it is the $5 Geometry Wars ... and for all intents and purposes it could be made on the origial Playstation I'd imagine.
Then there's the fact that they are supporting smaller independent games. This is awesome! Say what you want about Microsoft but on Live Arcade they give higher than 50% royalties and you also maintain your IP. That's better than any portal for PC games and your game sells 8X better on Live Arcade than a typical PC equivalent.
But back to the machine ... the graphics are great although they aren't going to blow you completely away if you've played the latest PC games, however the experience of gameplaying on the 360 is 10 fold smoother than that of any other platform and you can pick up a wireless controller and kick back anywhere in your living room, connect to Live and play co-op or versus with someone on PDZ while chatting with them, or play with up to 4 pals in the room ... and basically do all of this without hassling with software or sitting rigidly in a chair staring at a screen 6 inches away.
It's smooth and fun like no gaming platform has been before it. All basically without any big knockout punch (gimmick?) like a god processor or a techno wand. Not really dogging on Sony or Nintendo because I'll pick up those systems and surely enjoy them as well. However, MS has done a respectable job and I personally haven't played games this much in quite a while.