[Ghoulish Delight]

Like I said, the XBox pretty much collects dust. The two versions of Burnout have provided many many hours of entertainment and were worth the price of the system alone. But I've played them to death and overall, much as my brother in law is getting rid of the Wii because the types of games available on Wii don't really fit what he wants from a console, the same goes for me and XBox.

For the most part, each system excels at certain types of gaming, and no matter how much comparing of specs and graphics quality and other point-by-point comparisons, it all comes down to what kind of gamer you are.

XBox - Online gaming. It's king in this arena. XBox Live is a huge hit and the bulk of the game development energy goes into the XBox Live play. What this results in is few games that work well as single player, and even fewer that work well as multiplayer-in-person (i.e., have a bunch of friends over and play). It's been pretty consistent over the last few console generations.

Playstation - Involved single player, RPG type games. The Final Fantasies, the Resident Evils. If you're looking for something to eat up hours at home, this is your system. Secondarily, there are a handful of good multiplayer games.

Nintendo - Party games. Games like Mario Kart where a bunch of people can come over, pick up a controller and have a blast, no matter their skill level. Sprinkle a couple consistently good single-player options (some incarnation of Mario and, of course, Zelda) and voila.

For me, Nintendo's model continues to strike the right chord. I mostly want games I can play with friends in person, occasionally getting lost in an epic like Zelda. The XBox completely failed to deliver that for me. Once I burned out on Burnout, I have yet to find another game that's captured me, and have never found one that works well with two or more people.

So I'm not really going to miss it. The financial offset will definitely be a greater asset to me than having the system.

Oh, and I remembered that I also have Soul Calibur 2 (admittedly my favorite fighting game ever), so that makes 10 games.

Plus, if I ever need a change of pace we still have Dreamcast with one of the greatest games of all time (San Francisco Rush 2049, battle mode). AND Soul Calibur.