Well, thanks to Butmac I now have a 360 to go with my PSWii. I guess that puts me into the PSWii60 owners club. The first time ever in my life that I've been able to actually get all of the consoles of whatever generation. I had the NES but not the master system, the SNES but not the Genesis, the N64 and not PS1, the Dreamcast, gamecube and xbox and not the PS2. But now I have them all. The only problem is the time to actually play them. My job is becoming increasingly demanding and there has been a deluge of games to play this fall/winter. I counted them up this morning. I've got about 7 new games now on my shelf that I would like to play and finish as well as at least 4 others that I don't feel I'm finished playing. What a mess. A happy mess, but a mess nonetheless.



Well, I got my refurbed RROD'd 360 from Butmac as you might have read yesterday at about 5 pm. The first thing I noticed was the massive power brick. This thing is actually larger than a standard masonry brick. I can't see how MS could say that this thing is really "smaller" than the PS3 overall. That brick is huge. The PS3 has a built in power supply and it's a little larger because of it.



After I read the directions on how to sync the controller I did that and it just worked. The process is similar on the PS3. It's a little more sketchy to actually sync a Wiimote in my opinion. They just take longer and sometimes they just don't quite sync correctly.

This is when the fun really started... And by fun I mean 2 hours of complete torture. In preparation of receiving my 360 I went ahead and reserved my XBL gamertag (bhive01) on Xbox.com. I was told this was a smart thing to do. Not that I really expected anyone to steal my gamertag, but I supposed it was possible nonetheless. In order to actually use your gamertag that hasn't been used before you have to recover it to your console. This wouldn't have been a problem under normal circumstances but the XBL signup servers were being obliterated last night. I tried for 2 hours straight. Each time typing out all the info required and getting further and further each time. Around 8 pm I finally got it to go.



This brings up a HUGE problem I have with the 360 controller. Many others have spoken of this before. The D-pad on the 360 controller is complete shit. I was having to hit it really hard to get it to move around the onscreen keyboard. I made many mistakes because of it. If the process of typing out the names, email, and passwords had been less difficult this would have been less tedious. As it was, it was an awful experience. Once it went though things were great.



Another HUGE problem I had that I don't have on my PS3 or Wii is that my router doesn't like my 360. If I plug in 360 via ethernet (don't have wireless adapter), it fails to get an IP address. This is despite the fact that I can log into my router (Linksys WRT54GL v1.1 w/ DD-WRT v23 SP1) and watch it give the 360 an IP address. Makes absolutely no sense. I did get it to work by plugging the 360 directly into my cable modem. I'll be updating my firmware shortly to see if that makes any difference. I hope it does. I'd hate to have to buy a new router just because my 360 doesn't like my old one... then again gigabit ethernet would be nice.

UPDATE: I updated my firmware to DD-WRT v24 RC6 and it started working. I DMZ'd the IP of the 360 and everything came up roses.


This isn't just a bitchfest though. I'm sorry if it's turned into one. The router/signup server problem was a big S.N.A.F.U. that MS should really look into. If the PS3 and Wii can connect through my router there is no excuse for the 360 to fail at getting an IP address that my router already assigned it. And, having the signup server problem the week after Christmas is inexcusable in my eyes. A lot of people got 360's for Christmas. MS should have been prepared for the onslaught of signups.

To the good stuff? Other than the controller sync being quick and painless as soon as I got past the signup server issues I got signed in and next thing I know Snaileb sent me a message. I then replied. Then we chatted. Easy as hell and super seamless. I was extremely impressed at how easy this whole thing was. I got a 48 h XBL Gold Trial from D our resident Amazon Deal Guy, and it credited my account. I logged out and back in and I was good to go. I bought Bomberman for FNF 22 and poured myself a beer (or 2). It was all easy and seamless.



I then played the initial training mission of CoD4 and by the time I got to the second level I got a Bomberman invite from Snaileb and DVDDesign. I clicked accept and it quit my game of CoD4 and loaded Bomberman. There was one issue though, it didn't load me directly into the game because it had to update Bomberman first. Once it reloaded it didn't take me to the match, and I didn't know where to look for them so I had to message to get another invite. That worked seemlessly too. All around, I think the dashboard and the chatting and IM'ing are excellent. They just work. This is the functionality that the PS3 is missing. The Wii just plain has shitty online. I can see why 360 people complain so much about the online services of PS3 and Wii. They really have it good with XBL.



I have one more complaint. Noise. You guys were right. When this 360 gets going on a game the fans kick in. When I was just in the dashboard I thought to myself, "Wow, this thing is so quiet, I don't know what everyone was complaining about." I soon found out after 3 rounds of Bomberman. The fan kicked in and I roasted some marshmallows and blew dry my hair between rounds. It's truly loud. The PS3 fan isn't exactly quiet, but it doesn't get much louder than it is when you turn it on. The Wii is the same.


So, in summary.

Pros:
Lots of games
Lots of people to play with (Drunken Bomberman was great, but I ran out of beer)
Easy setup (if the signup server is working)
In game Dashboard/communications
Easy invites and game joins even from other games

Cons:
Loud when running games.

Catastrophic Failures:
Router problems really hurt
Signup Server issues were really bad
Horrible D-pad