did you really expect the majority of people here to even consider the xbox? There is so much MS hatred on this board there is no way.

I dislike the XBox for real reasons, much like the real reasons I have for disliking other MS products. Plain hatred never factored into it for me.

1. I do despise the controller quite a bit. Why is there 2 memory card slots on it when the console has a hard drive to save to? Just put one or two slots on the console it's self for the copying to a friend feature. And it is a bit hefty for no real reason.

2. Even with a hard drive, the games load slow. DoA3 is a good example on this one.

3. Halo sucks on that console. Seeing it at E3 2000, then on the XBox at 2001 was disappointing. Even the developers had problems using the controllers better then a keyboard and mouse. (And I made one upset by rolling the jeep and killing the team )

4. It really has no exclusive titles worth getting. PS2 has FFX, Gamecube will have Metroid and Zelda, and the PC will have Halo.

5. It forces too much hardware into a box. Why make the console more expensive with ethernet when 90% of the owners will never use it. And why port the PC to a console? The Gamecube design is much better. (CPU, Big ArtX^H^H^H^H ATI chip and memory)

6. It's going to see an influx of buggy games. Why? Well PC developers simply port their patch ridden games to it with no major effort. Thus it copies over the bad design inherent in PC games today. Other consoles have games that start from the ground up targeted at one or two different interfaces and realize patches are not possible.

7. Every XBox fan keeps pushing specs at me. They don't matter. Who cares if the XBox has a 733mHz Intel proc (known for inefficiency, thus the need to push clock speeds) vs a 405 mHz G3 in the GC and a 295 mHz custom one in the PS2 (both geared for efficiency over clock speed). And the polygon peformance numbers are crap. All that indicates is how well they can push raw triangles with no textures, something worthless for games. Instead push some quality games at me. If specs matter, the GameBoy would have been long dead, the PSOne would have never taken off, and Atari would have ruled.

And as far as everyone saying the Game Cube is kiddy, I have to disagree. Sure they target that market, but thats a smart thing to do to sell hardware. They also market to other areas as well. Just take a look at the game listing here here.

Zelda...I'll let you know after I play it at this years E3. Until then I won't judge it, just like I didn't judge the Xbox until I saw it.

</rant>