Lately it's not too much fun being an Xbox 360 owner that isn't so poor that kidneys and other organs have to be sold in dark alleys. Look, I had an original Xbox. It had a hard drive. I thought that was a swell idea. Now I have two Xbox 360s, and I might even add a third before the end of the year. These units also have hard drives. Monica and I even have memory units - the 512 MB kind - to shuttle our profiles and game saves between the consoles. I have all these optional accessories, which can be bought for relatively high sums of money, so that I can experience the best of what the Xbox 360 world has to offer - a lot of downloadable content, ever-improving Arcade games, downloadable movies, and so forth.
There are people out there who want to game, yet can't afford all this. I understand that. I also realize that Microsoft wants, no needs, to stick a console in as many homes as humanly possible, and in order to do that, there has to be a cheap version on store shelves. That only impacts me inasmuch I want the console to do well, so that I can enjoy more and better games.
However, what really sucks lately is being one of these owners who has sent a lot of money Redmond's way, and yet being told that I can expect sub-par games precisely because there are those less fortunate Xbox owners out there somewhere.
...