"We give our final opinion on Microsoft's next-generation console that offically goes on sale today.

After playing Microsoft's next generation game console, the Xbox 360, for the past several days with Need For Speed: Most Wanted and an array of their Xbox Live Arcade titles, not to mention playing a number of beta versions of other Xbox 360 games a month ago, I finally feel confident in saying that the Xbox 360 console, while not perfect, is definately a step up from the introduction of the original Xbox only four years ago. If you have the money, and if you can get one 24 hours from now from retailers like Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Circuit City, Target and other places that don't have their inventory spoken for (like EBGames and GameStop do) its a worthwhile purchase.

Simply from a horsepower standpoint, it's quite amazing that the Xbox 360 is so much more powerful than the original Xbox was just four years ago with a whopping 512 MB of RAM (compared to just 64 MB on the original console), three processors running at 3.2 GHZ each (compared to one at 733MHz) and the advanced ATI graphics chip, the Xbox 360 is without a doubt the most powerful dedicated game machine you will be able to buy. Yes the PS3 is coming in a year (we think) but there is more than just simple hardware bragging rights to the Xbox 360.

We could go on about other hardware aspects, such as the wireless controllers that are comfortable and well designed, the progressive scan DVD player, the support for HDTVs, the easy to access USB ports on the front and the support for transfering and streaming media from PS3 players and even Sony's PSP device. Being able to turn on your Xbox 360 remotely via your controller is a huge advance itself. However,t he shining crown for the Xbox 360 is Xbox Live. The original Xbox didn't launch with online multiplayer; that took another year and was offered as a software add-on but Xbox 360 has Xbox Live support out of the box (if you buy the $399 system; more on that later); The interface is well designed and easy to use and there is a ton of stuff to do even if you never use it to play Xbox 360 games online (but you will anyway)" [more]