The XBox Revolution

Well, the XBox 360 is formally out of the bag, and it promises to quite possibly be the most revolutionary event in gaming since the invention of the console itself.

The XBox 360 is designed to completely change not only the quality of the games played and the manner in which they're played, but the way in which video games are incorporated into our lives. Designed as more of a home media center, the system is designed to plug into your home PC network and allows users to recieve and send video and text based email, video chat, play MP3's, watch and download movies, and download new games. Many of these things are possible with current PC's but require tons of peripherals to achieve and have no standardized platform for deployment. The XBox 360 will take this sort of fully-integrated digital media out of the hands of the uber-geeks and into the family room of every middle class family in America.

The system is packed with more raw processing power than any console costing under $3k. Early reports last year listed it as possibly having 2 processors - well the truth is it has 3. It's comes with water cooled heat sinks, 512 mb ram, dual exhaust fans and boasts being able to do a trillion calculations a second. Every game has some sort of online enabled functionality, even if it's just being able to compare scores and chat with friends, and every game is in high definition. Oh, and the controllers are all wireless, so there's no more cords to get tangled in. Did I mention it's sleek? It looks sexy - sexier than Josh Caler, and much sexier than Nick's car.

The system will be released sometime around Christmas, and rumors have it that Sony is considering pushing up deployment of the PS3 to compete, although they haven't yet made any statements about its release date.

The XBox 360 looks well posed to do to both Gaming and media computing what the iPod did to digital music: make it available in high quality to everyone in ways never experienced before. Even if you hate video games, hate video gaming, and can't understand the point of spending time in a virtual world, you can acknowledge that this next generation of consoles is going to change the way American's live and the way we interpret the world around us.

Team Xbox Article

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