One of the nice perqs of being part of MS is access to some cool toys, like my new Xbox 360. I've been too busy playing it lately to post much ... sorry. :)

My favorite new feature of the X360 is the way it is always online with Xbox Live. While the original Xbox had a feature roughly kind of like that, the universal access to the dashboard via the guide button makes every game a live game. Seeing your friends log on, chatting, and comparing leader board scores is extremely addictive. When I first heard about the plans for Xbox Live in this regard, I chalked it up as marketing-speak for a sort of social interaction that was meaningless to most gamers -- but I've 100% changed my tune in that regard.

Achievements are points you can earn in the various X360 games that are a kind of persistent score between games. It's not like they can be cashed in for anything or even that they are awarded with any kind of uniform respect for difficulty... but collecting them is nevertheless strangely rewarding. I wound up playing through GUN on the X360 with an offline profile and was bummed when I realized none of my achievements were going to carry over... almost to the point of trying to replay it with my real account. Now whenever I'm playing non X360 games I have this nagging voice in the back of my head reminding me I'm not earning any achivements for my accomplishments.

The achievements are an interesting thing because they just feel so new to me. They represent a new kind of communication between developers and gamers, wherein the developer can say "here are the things we think are worthy accomplishments in our game". For example, in Call of Duty you get the vast majority of the 1000 possible points for beating the games's levels on the hardest possible difficulty. I almost *never* play games on the hardest difficulty, but in the case, I decided to give it a try. I'm not sure I'll finish the game on that level, but it was an interesting change of pace and pushed me to bring my game skills up a notch to try it out. Before the rewards for that sort of behavior would have to be various in-game unlockables... which are still nice, but now I can carry around my "Veteran of Fortress Stalingrad" achievement in a much more publicly visible way.

It will be very interesting to see whether the X360 can make any inroads in Japan, where the first Xbox was a notable failure. I've been blown away with how high demand has been for it here in the US, and with the Ebay market so crazy for them I imagine every Xbox 360 in Japan will get snatched up for resale if not for the actual local audience.

Definitely another stellar year for gaming... Dragon Quest VIII and Civ 4 are taking up the vast majority of my non-360 time, while Call of Duty 2, American Wasteland, and Need for Speed: Most Wanted are providing ample X360 goodness for the majority of my time.  Of course, my wife also just discovered Bejeweled 2 on Xbox Live Arcade so that might make getting time on the system even harder...