Taking XBL for granted, PS3/Wii upgrades

I FINALLY received a working 120GB Xbox 360 hard drive yesterday, which only had 103GB available after included media, Xbox BC, and overhead. Talk about relief.

Quick recap: I bought a 360 Elite back in August, and ordered a transfer kit. It took 3 weeks to receive it from Microsoft. At that point, I found out that my 120GB Elite HDD was defective. 2 calls to Microsoft later, I returned the drive and they had it replaced in about a week. I'm not too happy about it, but at least I don't have to worry about storage space, and my room mate has my old hard drive.

Microsoft didn't charge me, but I'm barely putting them above Sony in the Customer service department. Nintendo still wins hands down in that aspect.

After my pool league, I came back and started the HDD transfer. It would take an hour and 30 minutes which seemed excessive. I decided this was a good time to blow the dust off the PS3 and Wii...and probably update them. They hadn't seen action (read: been turned on) in months.

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Both probably took about 15-20 minutes a piece. I don't remember an XBL upgrade EVER taking that long...and I certainly didn't have to weed through menus to get them done. I did notice that I didn't have to re-connect my PS3 controller via USB cable *applauds Sony for doing something right*. Still, the PS3 upgrade process is the slowest and most obnoxious of the three consoles. And no, I don't use wireless for ANYTHING.

I jumped on PSN to see if any new demos were worth playing. Almost all of the games I was interested in I had already played on the 360. I downloaded the TimeShift demo, and can honestly say that I didn't really notice much difference. Except for the 360 upscales it to 1080p and the PS3 does not. Besides that, the analog sticks on the SIXAXIS just don't work for me. Even with the sensitivity on low, it was difficult to control the protagonist. Aside from that, I started downloading Folklore but I lost interest and moved to the Wii.

I trudged through Nintendo's Wii Shopping channel and tried to find good VC games. Super Metroid was the only game I wanted. I thought $8 was a complete rip-off, especially with no additions to the game (like achievement challenges). I have the cart for this game, but no SNES...so that is even more aggravating. The game emulates like crap on most PC's, so I figured this was the best way to play it. It is, but the price is ridiculous.

I played my new VC prize for a few minutes and checked my 360. It was done so I immediately shut down the Wii and PS3, quickly cleaned up my new HDD, and played Kane and Lynch with DemolitionNinja.

Just before, we had an interesting conversation about why we haven't really played Metroid Prime 3. I'll save that for another post.

Reflecting back, it's easy to take XBL for granted. These experiences reminded me why I don't mind spending $5 a month. While the Wii Channels are great for...dare I say, "noobs,", it just can't keep up with seasoned media-surfers. The PSN's interface is very attractive, but would only be functional with true mouse support. Even if it had that, it still takes much longer to look through a list of available demos than it does on XBL.

XBL may not be as gaudy as PSN or "cute" as Wii Channels, but it's fast and efficient. Plenty more media is surfable in a short time on XBL compared to the much slower, and clucky-interfaced PSN and Wii Channels. And as far as online content goes, XBL wins by a landslide.