Xbox 360?

Not a bad deal. Shop around of course.

Games are so dependant on taste... I rather like Ace Combat 6, Halo 3, Assassin's Creed, Call of Duty, and Mass Effect. Assuming you don't have other versions of the ones that have them. There's more, but I'm too preoccupied to list them now.

Of those, I actually find Halo 3 to be the best one online. You'll get scum once in a while of course, but you also get great groups as well. Custom-made game-modes can get real interesting too. (Ride or Die, Pinball, and Vampirnaught to name a few.)

From my looking around, pretty much everyone has the same bundle for the same price. Thanks for the suggestions.

The 360 isn't too shabby.  However to make the most of the online gaming you need yer subscription to XBox Live.  The rate for that is not bad, and I think the Elite package does include your first 12 months.  If that's your thing, then just a couple of games may well be satisfying.  Also, these games may have downloadable content to extend the playable lifetime, some things are free and some things you have to pay for with Microsoft points.

My first criticism of the 360 is that it can be a little too immersive.  When someone has their headset on and is concentrating on the screen, it can be very difficult to engage their attention.

Secondly, although we've long since entered the illustrious age of multiple-screen computing, the 360 does not come with out-of-the-box support for more than one display.  So multiple gamers on one console each get a potentially non-awesome splitscreen view of the action.  In other words, if you have a friend with a 360, don't expect them to love the idea of handing you their rarely-used second controller when they can much more easily find some online buddies to enjoy their game with.  But then it does make sense for M$ to try and sell lots of consoles and not care about the human element of gaming.

Personally I would suggest Gears of War 2.

Definitely recommending Gears of War 2, it's a great game. If you're a Star Wars fan, Force Unleashed is a good action game for a more cinematic experience.

As for the 360 itself, it's a pretty good system. The games library is large, and there are demos for many of them. If you happen to have a Netflix subscription, with a Live Gold account your 360 can actually stream the instant Netflix movies. You'll have to activate your 360 on the Netflix site, the console will give you a code the first time you launch the Netflix app and a URL to go to.

The one downside of it is that it doesn't play blu rays, only regular dvds.

Xbox 360 is pretty good. But it has a few problems. One is the red ring of death. That has caused a lot of trouble for people. They released a large number of xbox 360's that had hardware problems and I bought one of them. The second is that while the software on it is pretty good, the hardware is okay, but not that great.I have had many problems with my 360, but I think its been worth it. A lot of great games out there for the 360.

I recomend Gears of War 2 if you like third person shooters and if you like strategy Halo Wars or, if you can fing it, Comand and Conquer 3 Tiberium Wars. I love strategy games

As far as I know, they eliminated the biggest cause of the red ring of death a while ago in their manufacturing process. Certainly buying one now shouldn't be an issue.

Well unfortonately I still have one and am not willing to spend another three hundred dollars on one

Also, it looks pretty good on an HDTV. Before, my brother and I kinda scoffed at it. Then he got a 36" HDTV. (That's a real nice size. Easy enough to lift, doesn't take an entire wall, and still big) We started popping each game in just to look at the difference in graphics. Some scenes in Ace Combat 6 went from good to photo-realistic. I'd have sworn that you could actually visit the places in some of the cutscenes. Oh yeah, the aircraft looked fantastic too.

Halo 3 alone makes it worth getting. Sure you will have your afairs with other shooters . But in the end you will always come back to halo.

Warning: Fable 2 is disappointing IMHO

Also the Halo expansion will be out soon enough. Mass Effect 2 and Bio Shock 2 will be must haves. Gears Of War 2 is a great single player game but lacking in Multiplayer.

In my opinion the Xbox 360 is the console of this generation. It has a large library of quality games and through the wonders of Xbox Live you also have access to a lot of great, smaller games like Braid (which is also available through Impulse) and re-releases of games such as Banjo-Kazooie and even some Xbox Originals. And, of course, the downloadable content, which is becoming one of the 360's best selling points. It also does other great things besides games - it supports iPods and iPhones to stream your music collection for example.

The only real problem I have with the Xbox 360 is you pay for everything. Downloadable content always costs and most backgrounds and gamer pics cost. While it's not very expensive, it's annoying to pay for things you get for free on the computer. If your like me though, you'll only get the DLC for your favourite games.

Another thing worth mentioning is if you live outside of North America you might experience some issues with Xbox Live. I, for example, am simply unable to play over Xbox Live due to both NAT issues as well as Ping issues. Match Making simply dumps every player into a pool and picks out players at random. Very few games allow Match Making by location, so getting a game where everyone has acceptable Ping levels can be very problematic. For me, it was a deal breaker and I won't be renewing my Xbox Live subscription.

Apart from that though, I've had the Red Ring of Death problem, got a free replacement Xbox 360 within 7 days as well, and I still have to recommend it. It's a great console with great games.

The Xbox 360 warrenty was augmented in 2007 to cover the "Red Ring of Death" malfunction for up to three years, fyi. When my xbox 360 bricked it was fixed at no cost to me. 

As far as games go, head to: http://www.metacritic.com/games/xbox360/scores/

Also, Xbox 360 controllers work with PC's.  

Oh, one more thing. Those 360s can run a little warm if you keep 'em on for a couple of hours. There are lots of various gadgets you can get for it, but the only one I've gotten is an attachable set of fans in the back and they do the job wonderfully. I can keep it running for half a day and it'll be barely warm to the touch. They're pretty quiet too, just need to clean the dust off once in a while.

Thanks for the info everyone   I'm pretty sure that I'm going to get this. One question, though. Is a cooling fan pretty much required? If it is, what is the best (and cheapest) one?

I don't know about required. I read up on the 360 before I got mine and the general consensus was that they got pretty hot, so I erred on the side of caution. The fan that I've got is pretty cheap (http://www.amazon.com/Xbox-360-Intercooler-Black/dp/B000R9BIZA/ref=pd_bbs_7?ie=UTF8&s=videogames&qid=1241143400&sr=8-7) so it was pretty much a no brainer. I haven't had problems with this one, but there are others.

Depends on where the 360 will be. If the area it is in is hot already, then it's best to do so.

The only time we experienced overheating issues is when the cat decided the heat vent made a nice bed.

Ok, I have another question for you all. People on the Amazon forums (in the original link scroll down to "customer discussions, or go here) are saying that that Elite bundle doesn't have the most up-to-date chipset. If that is true, does it matter? Would it be better to get one without the bundle that has the newest chips?

Please, can someone answer my question? Does it matter if the bundle has an older chip in it? If it doesn't, I'm probably going to order one this weekend. Thanks

I have no clue, never looked at that stuff.

All Elites are more recent generation Xbox 360s, and should be pretty much RroD free which is your only real issue. The first generation Xbox 360s were noisy little bastards (I have one) and the more recent ones are a lot quieter. I think you should be fine - as far as I know they don't designate 'Generation 1' or 'Generation 2' offically, it's a fan term for when they change the hardware over at the factory.

Shame they dont delivare it to East Europe (Russian and Ukraine...)
Xbox360 Arcade cost here 450$... elite plus 2 games is more like 650$

my elite RROD but that was only after it was left on for several days straight while i was away becuase my family didn't know how to turn it off properly

LOL? Pressing the giant button is to hard?

and this is why I enable auto-shut-off.  I never leave it on and untouched for six hours.

edit: oops, necropost.  sorry

oh. looks like this thread has been bumped. have you ordered the 360 already? how was it for you?

Yeah, I ended up getting the Elite version back at the end of May, but I forgot to post that here. But I didn't want to pay the extra $100 for the wireless adapter, so I used my laptop as a bridge to connect the 360 to the internet. Then, of course, my laptop died on me, so no more Xbox Live for a while.

Other than that, though, I'm pretty happy with it. The games are awesome, and no RROD yet I'd say it was worth it.