GameCube vs XBox Argument
The following 'article' is actually an email I typed up to someone who wrote me concerned with my choice of a GameCube over an XBox. I listed most of my major reasons against the Xbox for them and a few of my reasons that I decided on the GameCube. Now, I know this isn't a terribly humorous article, but I haven't updated in a while so I wanted to put SOMETHING up tonight. If nothing else you can see my reasons that I don't recommend the Xbox. I do a lot of research into game consoles before I buy them. Almost as much as I researched my car. I always take a lot of fire on my choice of video game systems when I talk about them on the site as well, so this is a good stopper for that as well.
I actually had a large number of reasons not to get an Xbox, some I will list here:
- Firstly and foremostly, it's 300 dollars compared to the GC's 200.
- games are 10 dollars cheaper on average for GC.
- Rogue Leader and Pikmin and Super Monkey Ball are all excellent titles
- To play DVD's or have the advertised 5.1 channel surround sound on XBox you n
eed to purchase a 60 dollar dongle for each to "unlock" the feature. That.. is
damn lame.
- XBox launched with an impressive number of titles; Sadly most of those titles were uninteresting. The launch included 9 racing games (2 were 4x4 offroad truck racing) 3 football games, and a few other sports titles. Halo and Munch's w
ere the only interesting titles to me (I have MSR for dreamcast so no Project Gotham). Of those two, Halo's graphics don't compare to some computer games which
is really where it's at for FPS although I must admit it's a great game-- just
not a console seller. And Munch's... well. eh. not enough to sell me.
Hardware failures. I've never seen a game console crash until XBox. I can't
say I didn't expect it either, which brings me to my last point.
- Western Digital Hard Drives. Man do those suck, I will never ever ever ever
ever buy another Western Digital as long as I live. If the rest of the XBox was
solid as a rock, this would keep me away. I have replaced a Western Digital Caviar from the factory over 4 times, and it continues to fail every year around the same time and will be promptly replaced with the same size faulty drive by Western Digital when sent back. In a year, Xbox owners will most likely be stuck
with a broken console because of this.
So, those are my reasons I didn't get an XBox. I really wanted to get a new console this year and I did some reasearch into all of them. I seriously considere
d the PS2 since I feel it has the strongest presence already and the most likely
chance of really dominating and getting all the major titles. But I was drawn
to the GameCube, partially because of it's price and partially because I want nintendo to get out of the hole it got in with the N64 which is basically: "oh that's just for kids". We all played mario games when graphics weren't realistic,
I still enjoy them now. Banjo Kazooie, now that's a kid's game.
So far, I love my cube. It's easy to carry around with me, has some good games
already, a GREAT GREAT controller, and some breathtaking graphics.
