ResearchMeet the XBox 360
You can't find more of a hot-button topic in online forums than the Xbox 360. Since it's launch in 2005, the Xbox 360 has been buzzed about nearly constantly. Microsoft embraced the "next-generation" model of the market and loaded up the Xbox with features above and beyond mere gaming needs. This has put it in a position to generate even more spin, as the many issues revolving around hard drive space, Internet interoperability, and media capabilities override it's importance as a gaming console. To say nothing of the look.
You can't look at the Xbox 360 and not think "Apple". It's case looks like Apple hardware, with one small difference of the power brick, which isn't part of the case but hangs it's 6-pound bulk alongside the case and doesn't match the case. Nevertheless, it is praiseworthy for sleek design, considering that it's creator is a software company first and a hardware company only in afterthought. The controller is small and light; finally they've come up with a controller that fits in the average human hand. A popular question in gaming forums is "Why aren't there more girl gamers?" Having seen my wife and daughter balance each generation's controllers on a pillow on their lap and try to hammer the buttons with their fists, may I suggest that perhaps the standard design of game controllers is not inviting to the smaller, more delicate female hand? Just a suggestion. Perhaps they could make "his and hers" models.
Being a Microsoft product, they have a number of different grades of system. The core system is the bare-bones feature set while the premium adds the ethernet cable, hard drive, and other chrome. Beyond that, you can select between silver or gold Xbox Live membership. The Live Silver is free of charge and allows users to create a user profile, join on message boards, access Microsoft's Live Arcade, along with an online marketplace to catch you right when you're in the whim to buy something from Microsoft in the middle of a gaming session. The Gold membership has all this, plus online game playing capabilities. To buy products from the marketplace, you will need to purchase Microsoft Points - however many items are free.
Also being a Microsoft product, the interface is a robust GUI environment. From here you can tweak preferences and options, change the overall look with a skinned theme from the marketplace, play DVDs, and do all the other stuff you don't normally think of when buying a gaming console.
But come to the games; and there is a difference. You will really get full usage out of your home entertainment system with an Xbox plugged into it. High-definition graphics meet your wide-screen HD TV, the stereo surround-sound blows your wineglass off the table, and you at last have the smoothness of computer gaming on your TV. The Xbox media quality meets the highest-end computer gaming station, and sends any other computer game system home crying to it's mommy.
Microsoft has had a rocky path in some of it's other technology ventures, but has had a fairly good run on the home gaming console market. Now, if they could only figure out how to sell them at a profit...