Quick Xbox 360 Impressions, and other Sunday nonsense ...

I managed to get my buddy Andru to invite me over to his house to watch Survior Series on Pay-Per-View, but it was really just an excuse to spend some time with the Xbox 360 that should have been mine. Seriously though, I basically just took the nickel tour of the interface, checked out the demo of NBA Live, and played just a bit of PGR3 before the show.

I hate to be a joiner, but I don't have a whole lot to add to the discussion. The UI is beautiful, and very customizable. It's a bit confusing to figure out how to have multiple people signed into Xbox Live at the same time ... we were never quite sure if we had really done it or not (judging by the fact that my GamerCard doesn't know that I played PGR3, it doesn't seem like we did). The NBA Live demo was visually impressive, but was kind of jerky and makes me wonder how good a job it really does promoting the game. PGR3 looked great, played well, and I really can't wait to play some more.

The noise level coming from the Xbox 360 was startling. This thing was REALLY loud, and when I asked Andru if it just sounds like that when it's loading, and he said, "No, it sounds like that all the time." When you've got a good sound system, you can crank up the sound to block out the sound of the machine, but he was concerned about closing the door because of the supposed heat issues. He even said he was considering moving it to the top of his entertainment center to help with the airflow.

Finally, when I pulled the PGR3 disc out of the machine, I noticed that it was piping hot ... so much so that I nearly dropped the damned thing. I totally get that we've crammed three 3GHz processors and a wicked-fast GPU into this tiny box, but holy schnikes, I'd be really concerned about the longterm viability of this thing if it's always running that hot.

Surprisingly, the Survivor Series ended up being a fairly decent show, probably aided by a beer and low expectations. It's a statement about the current WWE product when neither of us long-time wrestling fans even knew the show was Sunday until we saw ads, and proceeded to get the show not because it sounded interesting, but because we missed watching wrestling with friends. The show was very predictable, but it got the job done, save for the ending, which was underwhelming. Note to WWE: Always ... ALWAYS ... leave the fans on a high note. The first thing out of our mouths when the show fades to black should not be "That was IT?"

On a side note, Andru's little boy Elijah, is what Tycho at Penny-Arcade would call a "snugglebug". Irrepressibly cute, even when he's upset that I picked him up to keep him from crawling up the stairs. We patched things up after we played a little ball, so it's all good. Turns out that the kid is a bit of an electronics savant, but he did have a bit of a hard time with the Xbox 360 ... though he's got that B-button down pat.