The XBox 360 will flop

After looking at the mess of marketing for the XBox 360, I’ve come to the conclusion that even if you have more money than God himself, when you polish a turd it is still a turd.

First came the horrible MTV informercial, in which Elijah Wood wishes he had the one ring so he could’ve gotten out of there. At least we had The Killers performing. Now, in 11 days, we will be subjected to the XBox 360 release.

What does this mean for gamers?

Wait for it….

NOTHING!

I’ve played the 360 at Walmart, expecting to be blown away, and what do I get? The same quality of graphics I’ve been staring at for the last 4 years along with the same games. Twenty five games are to be available for the holiday season. Let’s take a quick look and see if there is anything original on there…. Sixteen of the games are continuations or sequels. I think the game companies are onto this though, since they’ve dropped the sequel numbers and rely on names, such as Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland (oh no, does that mean we’ll have to deal with a European Wasteland or Middle East Wasteland), or Need for Speed Most Wanted. One game must be so good that Microsoft traveled to the past to get it.

Are sequels really that bad? Not totally, I feel that Tony Hawk reached perfection in Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2. But I want more game play than a 1st or third person shooter or racing. I want something fun, that I can pick up and try to master in 15-30 minutes. I don’t want a game that is going to require 30-40 hours of my life with no replayability.

Speaking of replayibility, it looks like you HAVE to have the hard drive to play XBox games, and I couldn’t find anything on XBox.com that talked about backwards compatibility.

Will I be getting a 360? No (unless Walmart has extras and I can double my money on Ebay).