One of the houses here on campus got an Xbox demo unit for two days and I just saw it up close on a 68 inch tv. Here are my thoughts:
The unit itself is bigger than any system produced. It's an impressive looking machine though. The controllers are pretty big and though all the buttons are within a decent reach, it's a bit big for my hands. I bet you'd get used to it, but it feels uncomfortable initially.
I saw Halo and Munch's Oddessy. Both look really good. I'm not going to comment on my problems of playing Halo or any FPS on a console, but Halo looked good. The graphics were sharp and the game played fast. Loading times were pretty nonexistant within levels. Sweet game though.
Munch's Oddessy was ok. The movies were sweet, but that's not why I buy games. The gameplay itself was decent, though I only saw the intro level.
In all, I'm impressed by the XBox's capabilities. However, I'm still not convinced it's going to do well. It might kick ass here in the US. But the GAMES are what matters. I'm not sure about the launch titles and there's little support from the top japanese game makers, which a console needs to survive. The XBox's launch titles are not as impressive as the Gamecube's, which is the reason why I ordered a GC rather than an XBox.
The Xbox has the power, no doubt about that. However, it doesn't have the killer game that it needs to make a big splash early on. The PS2 had Madden 2001 and SSX. The GC has Star Wars Rogue Squad 2, Wave Race, Pikmin, and Monkey Ball. The N64 had Mario 64. The DC had Soul Calibur. Microsoft is gambling that Halo will be it's killer app.
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Boo ya Grandma 
) who honestly can hate mario and zelda games? Be true and honest to yourself, they are fun to play no matter what your age is. The biggest and greatest thing about the N64 was multiplayer games, this was and still is the best party machine. And that is the reason I will have my 64 for a looooong time not collecting dust but burning electrons away.[*]controller sucks donkey ballage- Well this used to be little of a topic, but now ever since nintendo and genesis started competing in the "how many buttons can we jam in one controller?" contest, controllers have become very important. It basically led the saturn to its grave followed by the dreamcast (wtf was up with the wire coming out of the bottom?!?! Try to be different in a helpful way is all I can say. . . ). Then Sony made arguably one of the most classic controllers followed by nintedo's (leetle small for us big americans) ergonomic and intuitive controller. And now we look at the next gen console controllers. Sony, good if it ain't broke, don't fook with it. Gamecube, I tried it out personally, its seriously amazing, after 10 minutes of play it felt like I knew the controller for a long time. The xbox, I have not encountered first hand, but I have only heard of bad things of it. [*]Big size- okay sure M$ is true to its American heritage of bigger=better, but look at the trend M$. People like their consoles smaller not really that we can control it, but look at the systems of their time, smaller than the compeitors (yeah, yeah, I'm sure I'm wrong but it is somewhat true like the ps one). But why else did Sony make the ps2 able to be used vertical? Smaller footprint. Thats the reason they built the smaller ps one to push more sales on the "neat-o" factor. The SNES was a lot smaller than the NES and reviewers raved about that, the same followed to the N64 and now the Gamecube.[*]Japan won't support US product- This is going to be the biggest nail in M$'s coffin. Japan has a hard sell on US products. Take for instance the Atari Jaguar (mostly US blood from what I knew and recal) BOY OH BOY what a stinkah. It was the most powerful system in its prime, but nay say was the word from Japan. Since Japan is always the first to recieve the new junk, they most likely (but who knows) won't give a big w00t about the x-box. Without top Japanese software companies then supporting the x-box, its left in no man's land. 
could this country be getting that stupid?
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