So, any UK people rush and buy a XBox 360?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4491804.stm

Anybody buy one?

Any good?

What's it like?

I can't be arsed, I got 2 consoles an' a PC and no time. If someone got me one for christmas, I'd play it however.

I pre-ordered two back in August, to ensure I got at least one in the event of a shortage. Both came good, and I picked them up this morning. I sold the other one on eBay within 30 minutes of adding it, and the profit I made on the sale has paid for the one I'm keeping. I should add I did plan on giving my kids the second 360 but, when I saw how much people were paying for them on eBay, a little voice in my head (the wife) insisted I sell it.

I'm not big on consoles tbh, but I'm really impressed with it so far. Even the build quality is impressive. And PGR3 is, well, awesome!

Well, that's one...I read an article somewhere where one guy was fifth in line outside a store for three hours this morning, only to find out they had (count 'em!) FOUR supplied, and wouldn't be getting any until the New Year.

Allegedly, according to the same article, the sum total stock available for all of Europe over Christmas is a mere 300,000!

lol at profit cool. lol at 5th in line haha

Why not just wait 6 months and it'll be half the price and bundled with 20 games, 14 controllers and the bank mangers wife?

I'm waiting for the bundle where the bank manager IS a woman, heh heh

I'll wait until the games are a reasonable price. £39.99 is £10 too much IMHO.

I'll also wait until there is more than 1 decent game available (PGR3).

Heck no, I played it a bit earlier in the week and was incredibly unimpressed. Call of Duty 2, for example, looks worse on XBox 360 than it does on my moderate spec'ed PC. And that was on a really expensive-looking LCD screen that probably cost about five times what my home monitor cost. Blurry low-res textures, tons of aliasing, and the fullscreen effects that look great on PC look really crap. And obviously there's not a single game out or coming any time soon that I have any interest in.

Are they supplying ear plugs to overcome the loud noise being generated by the multitude of cooling fans?

I believe that sums things up nicely. The original Playstation had an arcade version of Ridge Racer which was a 'must have' for its time.
XBox 1 had Halo to help it gain some attention.

What does the 360 have on launch that says, "Buy me!" ?

I will never understand why people queue up for several hours to buy what is effectively a 'PC in a box'.

The new Perfect Dark. Not enough to get one before they're in a sensible state of supply/demand tho' and certainly not enough to take out another mortgage on the house. I mean unlike it's predecessor, the 360 isn't large enough to live in comfortably.

I'm not in the UK, but I picked one up in my lunchtime at work today. heh..
I really wasn't supposed to buy one, but they had more boxes left, and there was really any line or so... so.. well.. now I've got one.. heh.. :)

Once new Megadrive games were £40 and Gamecube games! ouch.

Is it just me who think's it's insane that people are lining up and going completely nuts over a game machine like this?

Why on earth would you waste hours lining up in front of a store so you can be the first to get a shiney new toy like that, just so you can be a guinnea pig for the mark-I version? Waiting a couple of months means a lot more games available, better reviews about what's actually worth buying, and if any major problems pop up there's a good chance that they're addressed & fixed in a better 2nd release. Look at all the horror stories about the XBox 360 apparently inadequate cooling - tons of people are running into overheating problems. And it's december now, image how the current crop of systems is going to fare by the time July rolls around. :-?

(In all fairness, I am not into consoles at all. We have a SNES around somewhere, but it's not hooked up. The last handheld game thingey I had was an Atari Lynx. Despite its demise, much better than the gameboy at the time)

It was so worth it for Perfect Dark, Project Gotham Racing 3, and Geometry Wars. Also, the system is quiet ... much quieter than Xbox 1.

I'm looking forward to getting an Xbox, but only when there are more 360 games instead of the 3rd party EA ports.

COD2 is a rubbish game anyway, but PGR3, PD2 and a couple of others should be good. The overall experiece if you use it propely shoud be really good. It's the mix of games, multimedia, online connectivity, voice communication, and customization that make Xbox360 a good package.

If you want Japanese games, you might be looking in the wrong place, since I don't like any japanese titles outside of racing games, and the Xbox generaly had the best racing games last time around anyway.

I received my machine this morning having pre-ordered back in August. I have to admit the feeling I'm getting from the games so far is that the system's GPU seems a little underpowered, but maybe that's just because they're first-gen games.

PGR3 for example has bloody tree sprites everywhere - two poly trees on a supposed next-gen console! A little disappointing.

The pad is ace, as is the Live aspect.

Saw this game (Kameo) in the shop today:
http://www.xbox.com/en-GB/games/k/kameo/default.htm?MSID=ba6e11cb98de4bcfb73fb5a46d7e505d
http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/666/666667p1.html
..and I must say it looks great visually. All the effects/shaders you could possibly think of (parallax mapping - fur shaders etc). Really nicely done.

I agree that COD2 looks mundane, but I suspect that is more to do with the fact that they made it for every platform going, including previous generation consoles, than the 360 itself.

If future games look as good as Kameo (or better) then things look pretty rosy.

With any new console, you have to give it time for games to start to push the hardware for what its capable of. Look at any of the first gen games available on any console and they were not cutting edge.

I had a good look at COD2 on an XBOX 360 pod today. It ran silky smooth and had nice lighting effects, but it didn't make me go WOW!!. It looked pretty good and things looked nicely bumpmapped and shaded in the right places an all but I just didn't think it looked "next gen".

Should be quite interesting to see what the games look like and the extra abilities are like 6 months from now.

This is the problem Microsoft have though : in 6 months time, PS3 may will in theory be available (or near as dammit). With the extra grunt that's bound to have (regardless of hype), that second generation of graphics on 360 will at best be comparable...first to market is not the guaranteed winner some people seem to think it is.

But as ever, I'll reserve judgement until I see more than the odd couple of games that I want on the console(s).

I saw an X-Box advert on TV last night and it didn't even show any games. Cos they're all crap! LOL :)

I saw two during Lost. One had no game imagery AT ALL, can't even remember what it was for! It was very short too, kind of like they can't be bothered advertising as they know they've created a false shortage.

The other advert was for Perfect Dark Zero, which mixed footage and reality (20% in game?), and was a bit longer but made no sense. The shots that were shown actually looked pretty poor - a couple of nice effects, but the surroundings looked like poor quality textures. "Does it show it's N64 heritage *that* much?" were my thoughts...not "must get it now"...

Nope!

I am just getting ready to buy a Playstation 2 and an original Xbox at looney cheap prices :)

Cheers
Garion
The Cunning :)

When the N64 hit £80 including Mario64, I snapped it up.

Now that the original Xbox has hit £80+halo (i think), I just don't care.

there were some reports from developers who said not to expect much from PS3. THe games will be comparable to 360 and not much better than current gen and it will be at least a year before the games on either system look like what people expect from next gen systems.

Sony also said that appart from adding the networking hardware, they are leaving multiplayer network gaming to the developers. This is really disappointing as if you have used old Xbox live, you will know that XBL is one of the best things it has going for 360 and gaming.

Just saw my first 360 in action today in-store. Some kind of FPS (surprise, surprise) was running on it. Looked kinda nice but nothing WOW. *yawn*

There was one solitary kid playing it - not the usual swarm of chav scum you normally get hogging new hardware demo machines.

Let me start off by saying I'll never buy any Microsoft console while I have alternatives, however if I ignore that for the sake of argument I can't see why people are so desperate to get one. It's expensive and has almost no games. I'd wait till the price drops and some games are released, then buy one.

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.

I think what I'll get is the PC/Xbox360 joypad. Should be good for all those Blitz games ;)

'dogging'?

sniff?

dogging = putting them down

Meh, I'll wait for the 360 to mature before considering it. But
by then I'll definately own a Revolution, so I might end up
missing out on the 360 altogether. We'll see how it turns out.

On the bright side, Microsoft loses over $150 on each xbox sold. (They make their money through the games, and long-term revenue if they can successfully establish a monopoly in the console market as well)

So is a Jackhammer.

Nope. Must-have games are. To be honest, with the notable exception of Perfect Dark, there's little in the way of must-have games for any of the new consoles.

The only question is, is Perfect Dark enough to warrant buying an XBox 360. For me the answer is definately "not yet".

No they aren't. It's a myth, nobody sells consoles at a loss. If they did, they would go bankrupt.

Microsoft has been selling them at a loss for years: The xbox division wasn't 4 billion(!) dollars in the hole for nothing:
http://www.forbes.com/business/global/2005/1003/036A_4.html

It's not like noone sells hardware at a loss: these days it's often cheaper to buy a new printer with ink than to buy just a refill cartridge, just to name one. Short term the company loses some money on the hardware, but long term they earn it back many times by hughly overpriced ink. That's why there have been such verocious lawsuits against cartridge refillers, they were yanking the carpet out from under their little racket.

Consoles are no different: A company can afford to lose money on the initial hardware sales, and make it back (and then some) over the long run by selling accessories, licencing fees, etc.

However, in the case of Microsoft there is more going on. Unlike Nintendo, for Microsoft the console market is not their bread and butter. They have a *major* cash-cow going with Windows and Office, and are sitting literally on tens of billions of dollars in cash (!!) in the bank.

Microsoft is thinking long-term: they can afford to lose money on consoles for a very long time. Much longer than any of their competitors can, given their financial resources. By selling the xbox at an artificially low price, they are also forcing the competing consoles to sell near the same price point, thereby limiting their profits, spending money, and 'danger' to the microsoft empire.

If it takes microsoft 20 billion in subsidized xboxes over the next decade so they can effectively run the playstation and nintendo off the market and get a monopoly there as well, you can bet that they would go for it.

And once you own the market, you can jack up the prices to whatever you want, there will be no competition... All you have to do is not go bankrupt until your competition does. You can more than make up for the initial loss many times over, for many years to come.

Now add to that the prospect of the console morphing into a next generation media center -- there is *so* much long-term money at stake that it's not even funny anymore. Microsoft doesn't just want their slice of the pie, they want all of it -- including the dish, serving knife, the table it stands on and the van that delivered the table.

History has shown that microsoft is willing to do pretty much anything to accomplish their goals. They are not content to share the market with other large companies -- their goals are to own the market, and they'll stop at very little to get there.
For now they pretty much lost the search-engine race to google, and they're deadly afraid to lose other consumer-contact avenues. Their goal is to be the end-all-be-all solution for everything.


...Which is a very scary thought.

"If it takes microsoft 20 billion in subsidized xboxes over the next decade so they can effectively run the playstation and nintendo off the market and get a monopoly there as well, you can bet that they would go for it."

That, and the consequences is a horrible thought. Of course the other aspect of XBoxes in homes is that it's advertising coverage for Microsoft, getting all the kids used to the name so when they are older they get MS on their PCs and also of course to introduce the new Media Centres and establish MS as a player in the hardware game.

when will there be an msbay?

R&D costs money - even if you're just recycling standard components.

And exactly how much do you think it costs to make a inkjet printer these days? Refill cartridges being more expensive have nothing to do with production costs, and everything to do with market value.

Except they can't because their mayor concern is getting money into the shareholders accounts.

But they aren't selling it at an artificial low price. You could buy each of the components in the XBox 360 off-the-shelf for close to what the XBox 360 costs. Ofcourse Microsoft are getting bulk discounts, because they can order several million units in one go, so are getting much cheaper prices than what you or me would have to pay for it, and besides which, they aren't buying retail in the first place.

I'm not saying they wouldn't. I'm saying they wouldn't do it at a loss, unless they absolutely had too, and they don't. You want to see a good example of what happens to companies who subscribe to your train of thought? Visit SEGA and ask them about their new consoles. Ooops. I forgot. They don't do that anymore.

You cannot run a business on losses - and in the case of Microsoft you cannot use your exsisting monopoly, or money gained from it, to fund expansion into new markets, unless you want to be on the recieving end of a US DoJ anti-trust lawsuit. And I doubt they'll want that. Again.

you can run a branch of a bigger business on a loss no problems if it serves a greater purpose. The lawsuit is is a goodpoint.

The graphics card alone ... off the shelf costs as much as an Xbox 360 ... that's not even mentioning the triple core CPU. If the 360 was being sold purely as hardware it'd be every pit of a $1500 new PC.

They don't care about the price of the hardware because that hardware is a gateway. Once you're inside the gate then they make money from the games, xbox live, xbox live arcade, and accessories. If you look at the past Atari had a struggle where Nolan Bushnell wanted to sell the hardware at a loss and the board didn't agree. The hardware came out at a ridiculous price because the board didn't listen and Atari went south ... quick.

Look at any system back in the day that didn't sell at a loss and they were all really expensive ... 3DO ($800), Phillips CD-I (closer to a grand), Sega Saturn ($400) ... which got wiped out by Playstation ... superior hardware for only $300. When the games only cost $1 a piece to manufacture you can afford to lose money on the hardware! Now, MS is also making money on Live .... which has no manufacturing costs (although there's some upkeep). They can afford plenty to sell the hardware at a loss and they'd be stupid not to because a huge user base makes 10X as much money as profiting even 2X on the hardware.

Nintendo never sell anything at a loss.

They don't need to. Something to be learned there, methinks.

They can't?

First of all, until 2003 Microsoft had never paid any dividends to their shareholders, despite sitting on tens of billions of dollars. No investor pay-out at all. Ever. But since the company as a whole was did great, stock prices go up nonetheless, and investors still make money by selling their shares to other investors later on. This means that until 2003, Microsoft never put any money directly in their shareholders accounts, any investor gains were based around reselling shares and speculation that their shares were 'worth it'.

Anyway, an important thing to remember is that their shareholders have 'Microsoft' shares, not 'Microsoft Xbox' shares. Microsoft as a whole still comes out way ahead, with billions of dollars pouring in from the Windows and Office divisions.

Shareholders demand growth, simply maintaining your position is not good enough. Since microsoft already has an 85% market share in the personal computing market, any further market growth there is pretty much impossible. They *have* to embrace, extend to, and dominate alternate markets such as game consoles, no matter the initial cost.

Anyway, it's been pretty well established that Microsoft lost money on the original crop of xboxes, so why would it be such a surpise if the 360 was any different?

Microsoft is a marketing company first, technology company second. They have two decades of experience of hyping and spinning not particularly special products, and come out way ahead of everyone else. Marketing is their bread and butter. They know how to play that game better than everyone else, so it shouldn't be a surprise if they do certain things that Nintendo wouldn't.

I'll guess I'll stop now. :-?

This is what I've heard as well. Of course Nintendo's system's are much more game centric and don't include a lot of the extra features of some of the other systems and they always streamline their hardware for their purposes, which I think is very smart. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to work in their favor as far as moving more hardware than the other guys. I suppose though that it keeps them on an even keel.

I think Nintendo covers a nich market and dend to take the second backup system spot. If you don't like their first party games then there really isn't much incentive to buy one.

Almost everyone I know that has a Gamecube has it as their cheap and cheerfull buddy system but mostly play PS2 or Xbox games unless a new first party franchise comes out.

THats why they don't sell that many systems I think. If you don't like Mario and don't care for the Zelda and kong games chances are your not going to buy into what they are offering.

My GameCube is the only console I currently own. I've never owned a PS2 or Xbox - they've never really got me excited enough to actually want one.

I won't be getting a 360, either, but I WILL be getting a Revolution.

I tried it at store.. The graphics werent that special, (even though I know that they will improve but still), and you have all the same boring Xbox games. I'll just stay in PC and maybe buy a cheap Revolution, which will atleast have different and innovative game.

I saw an x360 on demo in a few places. i'm NOT impressed at all!

It had some demo's playing, not sure which ones, but some were running at maybe 9fps. jerky as hell. I was like- "I can't beleive the XBox360 runs this slow!"

Very unimpressed. I'm very glad i got my fx6800.

On another note, PC Games are more buggy than the console versions, and that'll be the reason i buy a new console soon.

Surely you were watching a demo movie or something. It must also be noted that none of the Xbox 360 exclusive games had demos beside Kameo (which looks pretty good). It's really not fair to compare games that are quickie ports just to cash in on the launch as an example of what the system is capable of.

At any rate, I felt the same way before I actually got to spend time with the system. It's not something you can judge quickly but the system really provides the best gaming experience to date. After spending about an hour with it going through and utilizing all the features I then realized how great it is and how clunky other console experiences are by comparison. It also took a while for me to spot all the detail in Project Gotham Racing ... which you'll only ever notice if someone else is playing the game ... it's that detailed.