I’ve been reading up a lot on the new X-Box over the weekend for a couple of reasons – a) somebody at work got one and I’m about ready to invite myself over to play it; b) because I’ve been watching the auctions on eBay for these things top $1000 and I think it’s crazy; and c) because I’m overall still extremely pissed off at Microsoft for letting their shortage get this out of hand, and I didn’t even plan on buying one! But nonetheless, that’s an argument that is going to have to take place at another time for me to truly do it justice, so we’ll just skim over that one for the time being…
No – the truth is, after reading all that I’ve been able to find, gawking over screenshots, and generally letting myself get built up by the hype with everyone else, I must admit that this is a gaming machine that I actually wouldn’t mind owning. Although it’s predecessor was also more of a computer of sorts, this new model blows baby brother out of the water with a whopping three 3 Ghz cores and its no secret that Microsoft is technically losing money on the sales of the consoles themselves (again, not another argument for today because I’m certainly not going to feel sorry for Microsoft for losing $75 or something with each $400 sale) – bottom line, this is going to be a sweet-ass gaming machine that, especially with HD compatibility and Dolby Surround Sound, could easily gobble up hours upon hours of just about anybody’s time.
Which is exactly why I can’t have one! (and the price tag is a little out of my budget, mind you) Somebody made the comment to me the other day that they never really knew me to be much of a gamer, which for the most part is true – I certainly don’t consider myself to be a gamer and you’re more likely to find me either watching movies or doing web development than spending hours in front of the TV playing some game. But when you do…look out! Case in point – I haven’t really spent any considerable amount of time playing games for months, however this weekend a friend loaned me Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and guess how much unpacking I managed to get done this weekend! Just about as close to zilch as one could possibly get! I think I unpacked a box of pots and pans, but that was only because I was hungry and have made a vow to stop eating out through the end of the year! Other than that, I’ve pretty much been plastered to this thing from dusk ’til dawn…
…and ultimately, I suppose that’s technically OK – one of the perks of being single is that you really don’t have to get up for many things other than work if you don’t want to, but I do want to and I find myself postponing life until I can at least beat a few more of these missions! Today I did 50 reps with 60 lb. dumbbells…or at least my character did – I pretty much just pressed those two buttons really fast and watched him bulk up. At the end, the game chimed and my guy seemed quite fulfilled, and I was left wondering why my own workouts couldn’t pass by that quickly!
So maybe I’ll get one of these fancy 360s in a couple of years – I don’t know. As it is, in a couple of weeks I’m going to be buying an old X-Box off of one of my friends who’s looking for some extra cash, so it should be interesting just to see how I deal with the time management issue on that one! I keep telling myself that I’m buying the thing more so to act as a media center so that I can stream music and movies through my home entertainment system, but then again, there are some pretty cool games that have always been exclusive to the X-Box that I might just have to try my hand at as well. Oh bother… 😛