Although I'd been pretty excited about the PlayStation 3 in the months leading up to its launch, the lack launch units, the price, and the absence of any truly appealing launch titles, except maybe Resistance, led me to purchase an Xbox 360 last weekend. My choice to buy an Xbox 360 instead of waiting until the PS3 becomes widely available was due to a couple of factors:

First of all, I didn't think I'd be able to wait until January in order to get my hands on a next gen version of College Hoops 2K7. Sure, other 360 games such as Gears of War and the prospect of playing Halo 3 influenced my purchase, but I'm a huge fan of the College Hoops series and even though the NCAA basketball season is just getting underway, I want it now. Secondly, I purchased an HDTV about a month ago and while playing SOCOM and games on Xbox in progressive scan has been great, I'd yet to see anything running in true HD (720p). Now that I've played games in 720p, it's tough to go back, except for Bully and the occasional online game of SOCOM. Lastly, Micro Center, a small electronics retail chain, is offering a $100 rebate on the Xbox 360 and I'm lucky enough to have a store just about an hour from where I am in Cleveland. That's what ultimately pushed me over the edge. $300 for the premium bundle is certainly an appealing price point and gives me $200 of change to spend on games and such that I wouldn't have if I had chosen to wait for a PS3.

So now that I've had my 360 for a weekend I can say that I'm very impressed with the console overall. The Xbox Live Marketplace and the user-friendly nature of the console in general have really impressed me and although I dismissed achievements as being a useless feature in the past, I now find myself playing NCAA Football 07 at times just to earn points. If anyone has a 360, feel free to send a friend invite to yogi burr, just about every variation of snowcow was taken on Live, and I'll see you around.

UPDATE: My review just went up a couple of days ago and can be found here.

No, I haven't taken up a pair of gloves and started boxing, but I did recently recieve the copy of Boxer's Road 2: The Real that I ordered from Play-Asia. I've delved into the game over the past few days and my initial reactions are somewhat mixed. At first I had to overcome the language barrier in the game since I don't speak Japanese, but the handy english-language instuction sheet that came in the manual as well as the fact that many of the menus in the game are in english helped me quite a bit. Once I got by that and started getting into the game though I became hooked. The boxing itself is a very accurate reflection of boxing in real life and although on the surface it feels similar to Victorious Boxers for the PS2, which isn't a coincidence since its from the same dev team, the fights are much more slow paced and methodical than the fights in that game. The career mode in Boxer's Road is also ridiculously deep and allows you to plan your boxer's schedule and even choose what he eats from an extensive breakfast, lunch, and dinner menu. Being able to put your face on a created fighter, using any jpg image, is a very neat feature and one which worked surprisingly well. Anyway, if you're a boxing fan and are looking for something to play on the PSP then Boxer's Road might just be what you're looking for. Look for my final verdict on Netjak sometime around next week.

    The Sony Press Conference on May 8th really got me thinking. Not just about how much fun I'm going to have blowing the crap out of aliens in Resistance: Fall of Man, but about the motion sensor technology that will be incorporated into the PlayStation 3 controller. I couldn't prevent my mind from wandering through the multitudes of ways the technology could be utilized in games. One game that kept coming back to me was SOCOM.
    I started thinking about how the motion sensing of the controller could be used to control character movement in the game. Think about it, in the next generation, instead of pressing a button to make the character jump, all you would need to do is flick the controller in an upward motion. This same type of motion could be applied to changing stances in the game. Imagine swinging the controller down to have your character slam his body into the prone position in the game. Leaning could also be controller by tilting the controller left and right. Basic movement would still be controlled via the left analog stick and weapon aiming with the right, but by using the controller's motion technology to control jumping, leaning, and changing stances, there would be four more buttons available on the controller for other functions.
    While there's no doubt that the Wii remote will better utilize motion technology than the PlayStation 3 controller, the great thing about the PS3 controller is that it still provides the conventional control method while adding motion technology into the mix. Therefore next gen SOCOM will essentially control similarly to current games in the series, but will feature a greater level of intimacy with the player. I sincerely hope the good people at Zipper are seriously considering incorporating motion sensing into the PlayStation 3 edition of the SOCOM franchise. Just a thought.