Combat, shame on you. Even though you may be right, it's generally X360 central/Sonyhaters unite in here. Even if you shove the typical MS treatment in their face, they'll only deny it. I love how MS are trying to put a postitive spin on this by emphasizing how much they 'care' for their customers. Nice. At least most of their customers are zealots. Makes the job easier. Note I don't hate the 360 or its games. I hate MS and their half-arsed sneaky ways.

As for myself I just wanted to say I can't stand it any more. When the fuck are we getting Galaxy? Come ON, Ninty. Aarrggh!

I never got RE4 for the cube, so I think I'll try it, Allpowerful.

Jae, it's a nice change to see you not spitting venom. Why trade the old one if it was fine though?

But personally, I'm glad they didn't shoehorn some shitty deathmatch mode into the new Metroid Prime. Fuck that, Metroid Prime is NOT A FIRST-PERSON SHOOTER. I'm sick of all these idiots comparing it to Halo; they play completely differently. Just because MP3 is played from a first-person perspective and has guns in it, doesn't make it the same as Halo. The Metroid series has always been about being an engrossing, rewarding single-player experience, with much more of a focus on puzzle-solving and exploration than shooting.

Why fuck with Metroid by turning it into Counter-Strike, or Halo, or something? Why can't we just have another online FPS for the Wii, why do we have to force Metroid to change? UbiSoft is giving us a sequel to Red Steel, and it will surely be a much more polished product than the first, I would doubt that they wouldn't put some kind of online multiplayer in it. We're going to have our online games in time, so quit whining about Metroid Prime not havign an arbitrary, shitty multiplayer mode that everyone would hate, and thus trash the game for the shortcomings? I'm glad Retro Studios isn't trying to turn Metroid into the Wii's answer to Halo, and spent the time it would have taken to integrate online play on giving us a badass single-player experience.

Anyway I was C64 over Spectrum, Amiga over Atari ST, Megadrive over Saturn, Playstation over Nintendo and PS2 over XBOX and I bought a gamecube to play Resident Evil on then gave the kiddy cube away BUT. . . The length of time Sony was taking to deliver the PS3 and the fact I desperately wanted to experience Next-Gen made me give in to my better judgement and buy a Microsoft machine in Jan 2007

It's July and I'M ON MY THIRD MACHINE!!!

Initially I was happy with the games - Gears of War, Vegas and Crackdown are some of the best games I've had the pleasure of playing but the machine SUX! It sounds like a fucking jet engine taking off! Looks like a breadbin and has the build quality of a citroen 2 CV!

I can't get loyal to this machine! No matter how hard I try it just doesn't endear its self to me. The first casualty started making grinding noises with certain disks, It scraped and chundered like it was having a chomp at the software until one day as I was jumping like a nutter for another Orb it completely Gored my copy of Crackdown and seized up the machine. I took the game back to the store - GAME (I now hate this store) the manager, a woman in her late 50's with about as much gaming experience as my Mam = 0! laughed and said ''Wow! that's the worst scratched disk I ever saw! (in fact it drew a crowd) but we can't do anything about it because we and Microsoft don't recognise that particular fault, how did you have your XBoxes positioned sir?

Anyway I didn't want to send my ShitBox off to have it replaced because my mate said when his fucked up(red ring of doom!) he got some old scratched second hand unit back that worked but was obviously someone elses reconditioned machine, Game wouldn't replace it because it didn't scratch the disk they tried in it and wouldn't give me my money back so I was left to play Russian roulette with my Games and DVDs until it ate Perfect Dark Zero and my kids copy of Nemo and I thought enough is enough! I went ApeEscape in the store til they replaced the machine and phoned Microsoft Help(joke)line to be told I could send my scratched disks off and they'd be replaced but it would cost an additional £10 per title! Anyway bollox to that I rented and finished Crackdown but then a few months later my new machine decides to start taking the piss and constantly eject the tray every time you close it, it pops out!!! Put a game in, out it pops! Hilarious! Once again we are sorry sir Microsoft doesn't recognise this fault! but at least when I take it to the Store there's no denying it's knackered and the woman there simply returns after testing it and says ''Yip, it's posessed!''

So!... I'm now on my third machine! I'm playing Colin McCrays DIRT which is the nuts! but I'm sitting like a nervous wreck on the edge of my seat, not because of the sheer drop to one side as I rally round a mountain (the games not quite that good!) but because I know that at any moment my expensive noisy, toasty hot Bill Gates mantoy will inevitably chuck a mental and start doing strange things huge companies don't recognise!

In closing and I feel I've really vented on this one (but god it feels good!)All the machines and consoles I ever owned including 1 Apple Mac(woops!) and 4 PC's have served me well over the years with absolutely no problems whatsoever! (except blue sparks shooting out the back of my Amiga but that was because Roger decided to stick a paper clip in the back after a bonghit and is a whole other story!)

I'm holding out for Halo 3. I played 1 and 2 on PC and managed to avoid the previous XBox machine and after my second 360 went wonky I dusted off the old PS2 which now sits proudly alongside the Beige Breadbin of Doom, Just in case and has actually delivered some real treats recently like God of War2 so as soon as I'm done with Masterchief I'll try and swap my XPox for a bit off a SonyPS3 and will hopefully never have to live in fear again.

That's probably the worst thing about the 360. What are we - a year, year & a half in? There are some GREAT games. The machine itself though? Great power and architecture but it's sort of important that the thing not turn into a crashed aeroplane engine. I don't understand why people aren't screaming blue murder like they do at Sony. I mean fair's fair. People are acting like it's a 3% failure rate, not 30. Maybe that's hype but when authorised repairers abandon the thing left right and centre subsidised or not something's horrendously wrong. If you're talking business not fanboy, anything over 10% (being generous here) is looked on as a complete fucking disaster and the company would go under if it wasn't such a behemoth. And all to get the jump on their competitors.

Don't be too hard on the Mac Filmfunk. It sure is shit for games (if you don't specialise in 3d however for work it's great and bloody WORKS...) but remember Halo started there before the almighty wallet of Bill Gates descended on Bungie. Also as for what DigitalDong (what an appropriate name) said, sure it's been on phones for years but you'd have to be an imbecile to try to USE those shitty cut-down browsers for any length of time. Jesus Christ! ;D

BTW who thinks the Mario and Sonic game will be shite? Not usually a naysayer but...

If MS really wanted to do the right thing by their customers they'd replace faulty boxes with not a retrofitted "Elite" or a jury-rigged original but the 65n Falcon boxes due later this year (tied with a ribbon and a big "Sorry we screwed you" in a heart-shaped card). I know they're in a no-win situation as the poor owners can't and shouldn't wait that long but surely the new architecture is better than trying to tie the old ones up with bailing wire. Even the little cooling vanes on the Elite seem a bit like a stop-gap. Apparently the Elite is much quieter though. Can anyone weigh in on that?

I'm waiting for the REAL new version of the 360 at which time I too will be platform agnostic in practice not just theory.