Well, I waited patiently these past two months and finally managed to snag myself an Xbox 360 yesterday thanks to a tip from Bob that the Wal-Mart in Edmond had one left in stock. I headed over there and the first person I asked in electronics laughed and said they hadn't received a shipment in days and the last one sold out in 20 minutes. So I asked someone else and he went in the back and looked and sure enough they had some units in the secure storage area.

So, I take the box home and get start the herculean task of installing the 360 in my entertainment center. The biggest problem is that the power supply for the 360 is ginormous and although the cord seems like it should be long enough to reach my power strip, it's actually far too short. So until I get myself an extension cord I'll have to make due leaving the power supply sitting on the ground in front of my entertainment center. Does anyone know where to get a cheap 5 or 10 foot three-prong extension cord? I can never manage to find any.

I didn't buy any games at Wal-Mart since I had previously bought Call of Duty 2 and Perfect Dark Zero. Let me tell you... CoD2 looks gorgeous on my 42" Sony Wega and it sounds thrilling on my surround sound system. I'm running the 360 at 1080i right now, but I might try running it at 720p tonight to see if that looks better. The Xbox 360 running on HDTV is definitely a sight to behold.
I haven't tried Perfect Dark yet, but I did download the demo for Project Gotham Racing 3 and I enjoyed that. I also downloaded trials of a bunch of Xbox Live Arcade games and the full versions of Hardwood Hearts and Geometry Wars. The whole Xbox Live experience is remarkable and Sony/Nintendo are definitely going to have something similar in order to compete with Microsoft.

Even though the Xbox 360 remains quite scarce in the United States, Microsoft is preparing to launch the console in Japan to a seemingly lukewarm audience. Will the Japanese embrace the 360 more than the original console? Will the pending release of Sony's Playstation 3 kill any chance for the 360 to gain a toehold? Only time will tell...

www.gamesindustry.biz/con...