Revisiting the Xbox 360
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As Microsoft’s second foray into the lucrative gaming market, the Xbox 360 was the first of the seventh generation consoles to come onto the market. It offered a considerable increase in performance over its predecessors, emphasizing its all-in-one entertainment center aspects and not just a game console.
A fully outfitted Xbox 360 is a DVD player, a web browser, a chat room, a webcam, a digital camera and mp3 player. Hook up your flat panel television and you’re good to go, okay, maybe add some speakers.
With the success of MMORPG-style online gaming over the last few years, every Xbox 360 comes with silver-level membership to Xbox Live. Upgrading to Gold for currently about US$50 a year gets you access to online-only content, world-wide tournaments, game downloads at the Arcade, live chat and networking - a whole social experience.
And just as Microsoft, the computer software company, is constantly adding new downloads and releasing new accessories, it’s promising to take Xbox Live a step further with Live Anywhere. Demonstrated at the last E3, this will allow Xbox gaming cross-platform, onto PCs and mobile phones. Popular games like Shadowrun and Halo 2:Vista will be Live Anywhere enabled.
The Xbox 360 is in many ways a typical Microsoft product. One drawback though has been that Microsoft hasn't put more effort into making the Xbox 360 backwards-compatible with more of the original Xbox games. There have been rumors that Microsoft sent out the compulsory Fall Update to deliberately brick “modded “consoles. Whether true or not, another risk of unauthorized mods is the warranty could be voided.
It's no surprise that Microsoft has put so much emphasis on its online content. Just by virtue of having been around for longer makes Xbox Live a richer experience than the competitor's equivalents. There's a huge range of good-quality games available, and a year after release, the 360 still looks pretty and runs well.
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