I'm glad Loren chimed in with the poly count figures. Since his company actually writes games for these consoles, his word is authoritative.

We like our gamecube, but I haven't spent enough time around an Xbox to compare directly.

I can compare to Tod's PS2 though, and I have the following comparisons to make:

On the Gamecube, certain games (not all of them, but enough of them) have an anamorphic widescreen mode. Very few, if any, PS2 games have this that I've seen. This is really cool if you have a widescreen television.

The PS2 pushes fewer pixels to the screen than the Gamecube. The Gamecube renders all 480 lines to the screen, the PS2 renders only 240 lines. So gamecube games tend to appear higher-rez.

The reason people like me say that the Gamecube controller is better than the PS2 controller is because of the layout of the action buttons. On the gamecube, there is a large green A button and a small red B button. On the PS2, all the buttons are the same color, shape and size, so you're never sure which button you're supposed to press. When I play sports games on the PS2, I'm always passing when I mean to shoot, and shooting when I mean to pass. This never happens on the GameCube, there's no doubt about which button I'm supposed to press for any given action.

The PS2 has about a billion games available for it. The Gamecube has very few games available for it.

So, despite the technical superiority of the Gamecube hardware, the number of available games is an issue. Some developers are simply not bothering to write games for the Gamecube at all. So if you want to have the biggest selection of games, get the PS2.

However... There are plenty of good games for the Gamecube right now, and since the GC is so cheap, it's worth it just to get those really good games.

Specific games you MUST play on the GameCube:

- Super Monkey Ball 1. (SMB2 is nice, but I liked SMB1 better.)

- Star Wars: Rogue Squadron 2: Rogue Leader. The single best gaming experience I've ever had. You know the scene at the end of Return of the Jedi where the screen just EXPLODES with enemy ships? You actually play in that scene, with all the enemy ships and everything. This is where the poly counts of the gamecube really shine. You have to take out entire squadrons of fighters and bombers, then singlehandedly bring down two stardestroyers, the hard way. Absolutely mind-blowing.

I don't have Rogue Squadron 3 yet, I'm told it's good. I'll probably get it for Xmas...