The more I read and hear about the Xbox 360, coupled with the fact that I’m still hopelessly searching the ravaged, retail strip, the less excited I become about buying one.

… more daily crink

Now, Boing Boing points to yet another negative thing about the Xbox 360: the DRM forces re-ripping your CDs to get the music you want on the system if you don’t use a portable device like memory stick or MP3 player; reportedly no transfer directly from the computer. At least yet that anybody has figured out anyway. In light of what has happened in the PSP community, I suspect the hack/mod crowd will be all over this one if this situation doesn’t change by an official source.

gamespot.com has the hands on details about the game rating too:

Your reputation rating starts at three out of five stars, and goes up or down depending on how other players rate you. If you’re respectful in victory and graceful in defeat, you’ll probably get positive feedback and a higher reputation. A rude braggart or a whiny loser, on the other hand, might get negative feedback from other players and get a lower reputation.

It will be interesting to see how this works for families sharing one account. We actually have two Xbox Live accounts now but are planning only renewing one of them this coming April (only one gets played a lot, the other is rarely played). Of course this may change, but I wonder how this rating will reflect our family and not just the player in the family who plays most? I maybe, maybe play Xbox Live on average a couple times a month and not much more. Two of our three sons beat that Halo experience to the ground with one of our sons not quite this emotional (video), but very passionate.

So I’m thinking our middle son — the dedicated Halo 2 player — hits the Xbox 360 and has a bad run and other gamers rate down account. Then I get on, and I’m a very graceful loser. Kick my ass and I won’t whine about it. I am pretty competitive with games I really like, so I might get in a groove and be back later for a rematch. My wife? She never playes Xbox Live, so her rating would never change. Our youngest son seems like the best sport when it comes to our children so maybe he’ll help out our family rating. I’m just really curious how this rating will adequately reflect the account … or maybe it will. It would be cool if accounts could be split by gamer in a family situation like ours, so that I’m not sharing my gamer rating with my kids and vice versa.

Oh and someone has commercialized the idea of alerting folks when an Xbox 360 is available somewhere to buy online — for £1.50 + nework charge: xbox360locator.co.uk will search various online stores (UK primarily) and send a text message to your cell phone when they find systems you can buy.

Did this post make you go hmm?

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