My Wife Hates My Xbox Console Review

If you're like me, you didn't grow up with a Nintendo 64 or Sega Genesis perpetually wired into a little 32" TV in your family room.  Maybe your little brother did, or maybe a buddy in college had one, but there was no air of inevitability to owning a game system.  You hit your upper-20s or early-30s, got married, maybe squeezed out a kid or two, and confined your video-game playing to Doom or SimCity and fond memories of Donkey Kong and Mortal Kombat.

Now you're older, gainfully employed, juggling a ton of responsibilities, and thinking to yourself, "I've got this big, beautiful TV, a decent stereo, and a Grup personality, and allllll I hear about from the kids these days is how great video games are.  Maybe it's time the family and I plunked down some simoleons on a one of these newfangled gaming thingees.  But which one should I get?"

Well, your friends here at My Wife Hates My Xbox are here to help.  We're here to give you the quick low-down on the pros and cons of your options so you can make a wise, informed decision.  There are tons of gamer magazines, online reviews, and local tweens who can give you an opinion on which console to buy, but old farts like us need to be spoken to more slowly and in a language that isn't acronym-dependent.  I mean really, WTF?  ROFL!  Uh oh, POS...

So, by request, here's a quick guide to game-systems for all you normal folk out there:

Nintendo Wii

Since the Wii came out it seems like everyone has one or wants one.  It's cheaper than the PS3 or Xbox 360.  It has a family-friendly mystique.  The motion-sensor controls don't have the steep learning curve that will force you to memorize 'Square, Square, Triangle, X, Circle, Circle, X, Triangle' just to jump over a barrel.  This alone helps overcome thousands of intra-family arguments and will likely expose you to having your ass-kicked at tennis by a retarded five-year old.  But...

• For a basic party game, it's hard to beat.  Even your grandma will have fun if she doesn't throw out her shoulder.  But ask yourself how many parties you really have.  If you're one of those people with "friends" who actually come to "your house" for anything besides borrowing your grill, this could be a really fun system.  And let's be honest; you don't have any friends.  Even if you did, you'd have to buy all the extra controllers and about a thousand batteries to support the freeloaders.
• It's got built-in wireless access, channels that will look up the weather or news stories, and the ability to create a "Mii," which is basically an animated Playskool figure which can look like anything from Tom Cruise to Kim Jong-Il.  This is all great if you've never seen an internet browser, or your five, but otherwise...so what?
• It's also a safe investment if you've got younger kids (especially girls) and you like to lock them in a room to play by themselves while you polish off a bottle of wine and sob into a dish towel.  It's strength is also it's weakness; unless you're content always playing as a physically-stunted Italian plumber or an elf-like man-child with a gay hat--both of whom chase captured princesses that never ever put out--you're shit outta luck.  The promise of the controls is undermined by the lack of imagination in their uses, video-quality that is sooo 2001, and a game-selection that can best be described as "pathetic."

In short, it's a good choice if you're really not into video games, you're a cheap bastard, or you're morbidly obese and need something to make you drop the Butterfinger and get your giant ass off the couch.  It's basically a $250 board game.  Don't get me wrong...I do like it.  It's different and more social.  I'm just not that social.

Playstation 3

The predecessor to the Playstation 3, the PS2, was my first game system since I bought a used Atari 2600 at a garage sale in 1985.  Last I checked you could melt down all the PS2 game systems and games and create an asteroid the size of Wyoming.  But Sony sorta got lazy.  Unlike Nintendo, they didn't really target average human beings with their next-gen system.  Instead, they injected steroids into their PS2 line to create the Playstation 3, with all the bulked-up studliness and nasty side-effects.  What were the results?

• Visually, the Playstation 3 rocks.  If you made your last TV purchase based solely on the number of pixels on your screen and actually bothered to adjust it for optimal color output in your otherwise dingy basement then you'll probably want this.  And if you are that person then get a fucking life.  However, the games on this system look like candy,
• My two favorite game-franchises of all time, Ratchet & Clank and God of War, are exclusive to Playstation.  However, most everything else is available on both PS3 and Xbox 360, and many must-play games like Bioshock, Gears of War, Mass Effect, and a little thing you may have heard of called Halo are sticking their big middle-fingers in Sony's direction.  Wanna play those?  Suck it.  How does it feel to want?
• Up until January, when Warner Brothers stood up and farted in Toshiba's face , there was a replay of the old VHS/Beta war going on in HD world.  After the sudden, cataclysmic end to that conflict Sony's decision to pack a Blu-Ray player into the PS3 looks like a stroke of genius.  Gadget whores sitting on the sideline can order their copies of Planet Earth and 300 with a clear conscience, but what will they play them on?  What's the cheapest player out there?  Yep, it's the PS3.  Any DVD player that also supports Guitar Hero III can't be all bad...

Six months ago I scoffed at the PS3 as a bloated, over-priced also-ran with nothing but infinitessimally better graphics to vouch for it.  There's very little from a gaming perspective it offers that other platforms don't.  If you own or want a Blu-Ray player that works with an actual remote control then I'm not sure what you'd be getting except for membership in the smallest next-gen video game club.  But if you're looking for an excuse to buy a game system that your sceptical wife might go along with, you might want to point out how good Matthew McConaughy's abs look in hi-def.

Xbox 360

Microsoft just can't let other guys win.  If they smell success anywhere in the technology industry they back-up a dump-truck full of cash and try to bury and smother the competition with it.  Sometimes this works (See: Internet Explorer) and sometimes it doesn't (See: Zune).  Somewhere in between falls the Xbox and it's progeny, the Xbox 360.  As you can tell by the name of this blog it found it's way into our humble home, largely because it was out a full year before the other two and I have no patience.  Now that some of the shine has worn off does it still hold up?

• If you want to show your wife, girlfriend, or legal guardian the violent dark-side that you keep bottled up inside and is at risk at erupting at any moment into an orgy of blood and gore, then this is the system for you.  The game selection is robust, intelligent, and adult.  The video quality is more that sufficient to see the light reflect off piles of viscera, or the fireball shadows cast as you obliterate a small town with a gun that in no way compensates for your small penis.  Make no mistake...this is no place for a god damn plumber.
• Microsoft, in it's infinite wisdom, rushed to get the Xbox 360 to market a full year before the other two consoles.  Certainly a company can be forgiven if something they threw together the night before Christmas might have a few typos or spelling errors, right?  Doing a half-assed job is the American way!  Well, that doesn't fly so well when your console, which already hums along at decibel found primarily in sports arenas and on airport tarmacs, suddenly has a seizue that makes it's cyclopsian eye burn red and forces you to negotiate Microsofts byzantine customer-service network.  Admittedly this doesn't happen to everyone (it hasn't happened to me...yet) but I'd recommend keeping objects which could be thrown into TV screens out of reach in the event it does.
• By far the most robust online community for gaming can be found on Xbox Live.  Primarily populated by 12 year olds, troglodytes, and juvenile delinquents disguised as the new guy in accounting, it boasts downloadable content, forums for online death-matches, and an ingenious achievement-tracking system to track how you stack up against your friends.  This last part alone drives me to ignore my family and let dishes moulder in the sink in pursuit of catching up to Mr. Big Dubya in Assassin's Creed or Call of Duty 4.  Pretty sweet, except that unless you personally know the guys you're playing against you'll probably get utterly smoked by some smart-mouthed kid with a microphone strapped to his head.  And, unlike the PS3 or Wii, you have to pay to get access to Xbox Live.  Because god forbid you didn't pay enough for the console and games (or a wireless adapter!) in the first place.

The Xbox 360 is a well-established console with a game library tilted heavily towards Y-chromosomes.  Assuming you want to measure yourself against other players by some standard besides height, and that you don't mind owning a piece of technology that's just waiting to kick you in the stomach just as you're about to finish that final boss battle you spent the last twenty-six minutes fighting, it's a good choice.  It's also likely that if this sounds appealing you probably need psychiatric care, and your wife is probably secretly looking into calling the authorities on you anyway, so you may want to save your money for the treatment.

So back to the question at hand:  how do you decide between them?  Each has their own pros and cons, and it's plausible that your life-style doesn't lend itself to an easy categorization between pansy, dweeb, or psychopath. 

The solution to this, of course, is to get them all.  This is the path of the Chosen...the path I have taken.  As the Buddhists say, "Cast off pretense and self-deception and see yourself as you really are."  And we're all greedy little pigs who get off on shiny objects. 

P.S.  Attention Sony:  My path to enlightenment is currently endangered because I do not as yet own a Playstation 3.  You don't really want Microsoft and Nintendo to win in my house by default, right?  If you at all feel that this review in any way misrepresents your console, please feel free to send me one (free of charge) so I can truly understand and experience your product and correct any misperceptions I have.

Comments

[Papers]

I'm impressed! It looks like you did your research on the systems. I own both the Wii and the 360. You are right about the Wii. If you don;t have parties or don't live with 4 other college kids I wouldn't bother. Not really a solo gaming system. PS3.....talk to me after Home comes out or something worth my attention otherwise why pay for ported 360 games that come out 3 - 7 months after MS and don't offer on-line.

360...Going strong but will it last? They need more first party games like Nintendo but I still feel it is the system of choice.

[Kara]

Boy did this post ever change your google ads. I liked them better before.

Thank you, Tony, for confusing me even more. I thought I was sure--- now, errr, ummmm, not so much.

[TheOtherCW]

Okami, hu? That looks like fun, but I still haven't picked it up. Think I can find it used? Oh, and you MUST get Rock Band so we can play! I kick your ass!

[Kara]

We are now the proud owners of PS3 and Rock Band.

[R4 carte]

Great detailed review, can you also please review Nintendo Wii and DSi?