
Microsoft has tried to catch up with some of the titans of the gaming world, such as Sony with the release of the Xbox 360. The Xbox 360 offers many new features that players will love:
- Free limited subscription to online gaming - This allows players who have not been participating in online gaming a chance to see what is available at no charge.
- All Xbox 360s come with Live-aware - This means you can get a friend invite or see who is online and what they are playing from your Xbox 360. The button in the middle of the controller makes all this very easy.
- It offers great media features including listening to music while you play games, the ability to create custom playlists and your own custom soundtracks, the ability to rip songs from original CDs to your Xbox 360 and stream music from your MP3 player to your Xbox 360. You can also create slideshows of photos to share with friends and family.
- Xbox 360 has a wireless controller. No more tripping over the wires, although it can support two wired controllers through USB ports in the front.
- The game console is not only great for gamers, but developers as well. It is a powerful machine with an unprecedented amount of RAM - a feature added on the request of developers.
But, Xbox 360 still has some problems that need to be worked out:
- Their Japanese third party support is lacking - While some Japanese developers offer software for the Xbox, it is small in number when compared to what the same developers offer for Playstation.
- While the controller is wireless, it eats batteries rather quickly. Standard alkaline batteries only last about thirty hours, so if you buy Xbox 360, invest in rechargeable batteries to save yourself some money in the end.
- When they were set up in WalMart stores before days before the launch, many suffered what is known as the Xbox "360 screen of death," an error screen. The Xbox 360 had also had some problems with overheating.
- Some report the Xbox 360 system as being very noisy when playing an Xbox 360 disc.