Oh my god, it is so big! (Xbox 360 delight #004)
Size does matter. Computer screens are swell and all, but they're tiny. We sit close to computers because we have to. Ever since purchasing an HD projector (and managing to stay married after my sugar mommy saw the credit card bill!) I've had a number of guests over at Joystiq's outpost in the city of brotherly love and the reaction from one and all has been unanimous: gaming in HD is friggin' sweet.
Guests have been bowled over not just by the "whoosh whoosh" of the Xbox 360 interface but by the visual accompaniment: crisp text and vibrant colors projected in 1080i, 8.4 feet wide. It's enough to make even my most hardcore gamer friends giddily wax enthusiastic in a way that none of them had ever done before. One said, "whoa, instant party" when I streamed an MP3 file off of my computer with full-screen visualizations.
With guests in the bag, I turned to bigger game. How about the better half who has steadfastly refused to game with me for over 13 years? The last time I even tried to turn her on to gaming was 1998 when I showed her the Half-Life opening sequence on my 19-inch CRT monitor, thinking she'd be impressed. Her response: "So small! Let's go watch a movie."
Yesterday, I convinced her to play Project Gotham Racing 3. For the first time ever, my wife not only willingly held a controller, she actually refused to let me take it away from her. If HD gaming can convince her to finally play, I'm delighted. She wouldn't have bothered to play if the display weren't quite so large and beautiful, if the visuals weren't so inviting, and if the controllers weren't so darned easy to pick up and hold.
Other Xbox 360 delights: 001, 002, 003
Xbox 360 annoyances: 001, 002, 003, 004, 005, 006, 007, 008, 009
