a change is as good as a rest

[no angel]

i doubt any one here will remember me, i've been lurking at ntsc-uk for years, but was never a prolific poster, but microsoft has given me back something i've been missing for years and i just wanted to mention it. for personal reasons i've been out of the gaming 'loop' for a year or so. a move of address and no broadband meant my internet viewing was seriously curtailed, and a lack of finances meant i couldn't afford to buy many games, but all that has changed. one move of house, and one new girlfriend (who actually plays games by choice!) has changed all that, and i know find myself enjoying games again. a big part of that is the 360.

i've always enjoyed games, even used to import the odd title back in the days of the snes, but when the playstation came laong everything seemed to get more complicated. region protection was better and there seemed to be fewer decent titles released. pc's passed me by - to expensive to keep up to date, and i'm not the most technical of people. the lovely bryony bought me a 360 for christmas, and it seems to be aimed at people just like me. live was a joy to set up, and online gaming is every bit as fun as i imagined it would be for pc owners. i love the wireless joypads, and the machine runnign on an hd tv is a joy to behold. thanks to microsoft, i have now bought a new hd lcd, sorted a wireless network in my house, and have rediscovered what made gaming great for me in the fisrt place. hell, i've even hooked my psp up through it.

i guess the point of all this is to say in a time whne more and more gamers seem to be becoming increasingly jaded with there hobby, it was nice for me to rediscover it, and i attribute a large portion of that to ms and the new generation of consoles. i'm now enjoying getting my ass kicked on live regularly, it would ne nice to see an yfo you on there so feel free to add me if you like.

it feels good to be back!

[MonkeyWrench]

The 360 has done the same for me too. Whilst I've never really dropped out of the loop, over the last generation I realised something was missing from gaming that I used to enjoy back in the 8 and 16-bit days. I lost count how many times I clocked Actraiser on the SNES or Mystic Defender on the MD, and I'd love every minute of it. In the last few years I can count how many games I've completed more than once on one hand and suddenly having bought the 360 I've completed a bunch of them multiple times all the in the space of a month, all thanks to the achievement system. I've seen a few interviews with developers that are equally excited about this new feature, not to mention the XBLive Market Place. I really think that this kind of stuff could turn out to be Microsoft's competitive advantage.

[Yoshimax]

Thirded.

I've not ever gone "off" gaming - been playing games since the ZX81 - But the 360 has some really great ideas which have paid off (I suspect) more than MS could ever have dreamed.

The "mixture of hardware and software services" is fantastic - voice chat which is uninterrupted when you change discs or whatever, chat channels, switching the console on/off with the pad, the media sharing - fantastic.

And the games are not bad either

[Lebowski]

a lot of talk about hardware here and not a lot of talk about software? hmmmm have you really been turned back onto games or is it just the glisten of new hardware with sparkly graphics that you like, i hate to burst your bubble, but its not as if the 360s really doing anything that the xbox dident do before, things are a bit more polished now yes, but its hardley a gameing revolution.

[no angel]

a lot of talk about hardware here and not a lot of talk about software? hmmmm have you really been turned back onto games or is it just the glisten of new hardware with sparkly graphics that you like, i hate to burst your bubble, but its not as if the 360s really doing anything that the xbox dident do before, things are a bit more polished now yes, but its hardley a gameing revolution.

kind of wrong, kind of right. i never got into the whole live thing with the original xbox, andi could imagine that the basic platform on the 360 is very similar. What the 360 has done for me personally is to make online gaming simple to set up and enjoyable to play, and although HD does little for the quality of the games, you can't deny it improves the quality of the experience. of course i'm enjoying the games too - cod2 is, although short, a very immersive and highly polished single player, pd0 despite it's flaws is a fair bit of fun on line and pgr3 just makes me smile.xbl arcade also deserves a mention here. geometary wars, although it makes my eyes hurt, is seriously addictive, and now i've noticed people here after games of gauntlett i'll be downloading that as well.