The old thread for the XBox 360 is six years old and... corrupted. And rather necropost in a thread that has lost it's way, I'll just make another.

Last Tuesday, Gears of War 3 came out and along side with it the GOW3 XBOX Bundle with the game, a Special Edition 320GB console and two controllers. For 399.99. I bought it today and I haven't opened it.

I already own a 320GB PS3 with a great physical and digital game library (and a count rivaling Blu-Ray collection) with most of the accessories to go with the console. I've been considering an Xbox for some time and this deal was way too good to pass up. Sure, I've got some buyers remorse. Now, the 360 is no where near the entertainment center the PS3 is. I'm not going to be supporting the Xbox with a game collection as well. I'll be keeping GOW3 (as it's likely not a retail copy) but other than that I can't imagine what games I'd buy - Halo? And I'm not going to buy into Live. A lot of my friends have PS3's and I play with them occasionally. Also, we swap games and bring games over when we hang out. I have significantly fewer friends with 360's, and the friends that do, I hardly hang out with outside of the Holiday's and birthdays.

One draw I like about the 360 is the fact all the games I've seen are 1080p, where as the PS3 is mostly 720. Which honestly irks me.

This is more of a buyers remorse post than anything, do you guys think I should return the 360? Is it possible to get a decent online experience (outside of the Store) without Live: Leaderboards, friends, etc? Or would I be better off putting this money towards something else?

1) Neither the 360 nor PS3 every really render at 1080p. It's not even common for them to render at 720p, often times they render even lower. The only difference is does your TV do the upscaling or the console. The 360 actually has a pretty good upscaler, so it's usually better for the 360 to do it. The PS3's partial hardware upscaler sucks, which is why it's rarely used.

2) 360 has a lot of games you can pick up used now. It launched with an excellent portfolio of games and has kept that up over time, so unlike the PS3 you can actually find some really good games really cheap for the 360 in the gamestop used bins.

3) Live Silver is free, so might as well make an account for that.

4) Why do you say the 360 is no where near the entertainment center the PS3 is? Aside from Blu-Ray, it's pretty much neck and neck. And if you've got a Windows computer, the 360 is a Media Center extender. 360 also has the much better remote between the two.

Very true. Sniper, for one, is $17 on 360 and $33 on PS3. Which is one game I'm picking up if I keep the 360.

I've already got an account, created on my friends 360. Fortunetly-ish. Lost the free month already of Gold but it's a month. Funny story too, I made m account and I was auto-assigned a username. Spent my free name change on a more desired name.

My current computer servers as a media server which my PS3 connects to without hiccup, and it sounds like the 360 will be able as well. It's also got Netflix (as does the 360 but I'll need Gold to use Netflix). I must point out, I rarely connect to Netflix from my PS3, instead I use my IPTV's Netflix App; I mostly watch Netflix when I go to bed, so all I do is set a show, set the sleep timer and when I go back to watch I just have to rewind a bit from the last saved location in the video.

As for the remote, I'm not concerned. CEC control through my TV is well enough at times. Aside from CEC, it's just a matter of pressing play on the game controller and sitting though a movie; I'm not one to need a media remote since I don't use any of the BluRay features (i.e. Bookmarking).

Without Blu-ray, you have no way of playing HD video, which means as a media center, the Xbox can't take advantage of the extra resolution your HDTV provides.

That aside, it does do HD games a lot better than the PS3(and I mean a *lot* better, the PS3 looks like a bloody Monet painting on HDTVs).

The two series of games I would highly recommend on the Xbox are Mass Effect and Saints Row. Both started out as Xbox exclusives(so you can only play the first game of each on the XB360), both offer a unique spin on their respective genres, and both have highly anticipated third installments coming out soon.

Well, the 360 features a HD-DVD drive and an optional external Blu-Ray drive, if I'm not mistaken. Though HD-DVD is long dead, I kind of wish I picked up a few HD-DVD's while they were a cheap $2.

I've heard great things about Mass Effect. I'll read the back cover and look into, on first glance some reviewers have recommended Dragon Age II and Star Wars: Old Republic(?) as games that are similar; neither of which I'm a fan of. So, I'll see.

External HD-DVD drive, no Blu-Ray option. Everything is moving toward streaming anyway, but Blu-Ray is one of the biggest selling points of the PS3, IMHO.

Mass Effect is more of a shooter with some RPG elements (compare to KOTOR, which is more of a pure RPG), and Mass Effect 2 simplifies many of the RPG elements.

Oh, really? Interesting. I guess that explains why some games are multi-discs.

Are you familiar with Borderlands? That game is just like you describe. I'll look for a demo, one way or another, actually.

At first I thought there were not many good games. Now I see there is alot of good games. And a very wide genre selection. also Fallout is alot like kotor you would probably like it.

I'm likely not going to build my game collection on the XBox like I have on the PS3. I'll likely buy Trials from the LIVE Store (my friend has that and it's so much fun) and a few other exclusives as time goes on. As for Fallout, I got Fallout 3 GOTY edition new on Clearance at work, played for a bit - until I left the locked mountain city - and sold it to Gamestop. I see what makes the game great but it wasn't my thing.

I'll probably keep the XBox as a party machine and encourage friends to bring over any PS3 or XBox games they wish to play. Though, most of my personal gaming will be on the PS3.

I'll have to walk the collection of games at work and at Gamestop to see if there are any extra games I will pick up; I'm already eyeing the Trials/Limbo/Splosion Man triple game pack at work and the Gears of War Triple Pack with GOW1, 2 and a map pack for GOW2. Hoping I can buy them used at Gamestop.

Oh, one more game-you-must-get-for-the-Xbox-360-or-you're-a-complete-tool:

Perfect Dark.

Not "Perfect Dark: Zero", the original, all-they-touched-was-the-graphics Perfect Dark. If you get LIVE as well, the multiplayer is SICK.

Looks like a good game, I'll check if there's a demo.

There is a trial, but it's like 2 single-player missions.

Good enough, that's all demos are usually.

Wasn't "Perfect Dark" a 3rd Person shooter for the gameboy?

Yes it was, or at least it was a tie-in to the N64 version that was an FPS by Rare based on the GoldenEye 007 engine. You could also unlock cheat-codes in that N64 version by plugging the Gameboy cartridge into the controller using the N64 transfer pak.

There was also going to be a feature to use the Gameboy camera to map pictures of your friends' faces to character models in the game, but that was scrapped due to the Columbine massacre and the nation's knee-jerk reaction to violent video games that followed. A shame too, because that would have been really cool for the Xbox version with it's high-definition textures. They could've even done some Kinect integration to generate character texture maps based on the player and whatever s/he is wearing.

Still though, Perfect Dark is the closest you'll ever get to Goldeneye-style gunplay on a current-gen console. And at 60 FPS, the action couldn't be more fluid.

No, I mean like LAUNCH titles old. You can find tons of stuff at the $10 mark that is really good, depending on what you're into. If you're on the fence, just go take a look at the used game bins near you. Look up ratings on something like metacritic, and you might be surprised just how many really, really good games you'll find for super cheap. The PS3 just doesn't have that, as it took a *long* time for it to really get any good games.

Also, the 360 has the way better controller



Not true at all. You can stream HD videos from your computer just fine. There's also Zune Movies or whatever if you want to rent HD movies.



Uh, no. The PS3 and 360 are really, really close in graphics. Unless you have a TV with a terrible upscaler that can't handle a 720p input very well. Or whatever PS3 you are using is only using the cables it came with, which aren't HD.



Huge +1 on both of those. Mass Effect is awesome (and no, it's not really like Borderlands), and Saints Row is pretty fun. Crackdown is also really good. I actually like Perfect Dark: Zero, too. And of course the Gears of War series is quite solid. Forza and PGR series are quite fun if you're into racing.

I'm still not seeing any motive to keep the 360. Sure, game titles are a good chunk as to why I should keep/play a system but I don't see much else. Most of what makes XBox great lies in a Gold Membership for LIVE, from what I understand in discussions with friends, which sucks since I'm not going to invest in LIVE.

I completely agree on the better controller, it does feel more natural. I paid attention to that as I played both my friends XBox and PS3 when I went over on Friday.

The PS3 has me sold: BluRay, free Online and Bluetooth (which I hear on and off that the XBox does as well). Another off putting thing about XBox is all the cables. Granted, that's before it had built-in wifi and the other cable-y thing involves an adapter to plug a certain pair headphones in.

I'm having bad mood swings of Buyers Remorse and "Alright! I finally got an XBox!"

Except you can't play Perfect Dark on the PS3, and there's really no reason to own video game consoles at all if you aren't going to be able to play Perfect Dark on at least one of them.

And, that's the only selling point you're pitching?

It's Perfect Dark man, that's the only selling point I need!

There are other reasons too, like the Xbox-exclusive Mass Effect and Saints Row series, but they've already been mentioned earlier in this topc, and to me at least PD is the most important reason to own an Xbox.