The XBox 360 is More Than Just Games

On December 25, 2009, my kids cried at seeing the coveted xBox 360 sitting under their Christmas tree. Naturally, I couldn’t help but laugh. It was just another video game system to me, which I figured would eventually end up in the garage much like all their other systems. I couldn’t believe their reaction. Just what in the world was it about the xBox 360 that made these kids so emotional? I mean, tears?! C’mon!

Well, until they started up the system, I probably never would have understood. The xBox 360 is so much more than just a game system. It’s an outright entertainment system.

Like a computer, the xbox connects to the Internet for an impressive list of activities either via ethernet or wireless capability. It provides a nice live gaming environment along with opportunities to video chat, create and join parties, and maintain a list of xBox friends much like today’s social networking sites do. In fact, Microsoft just incorporated Facebook into its system so that friends can make quick status updates without having to log off their current game.

For the adults in the house, xBox provides digital home movie and photo sharing plus music downloads — all right from your friendly USB port. You can even shop online from xBox 360. You can shop for new games, new music, old and new movies – even your favorite sitcoms. And as you might expect, you can download a lot of this stuff directly to the game system and access it right then and there.

The xBox 360 is a whole experience unto itself which could definitely elicit some rather emotional responses. My initial reaction was total awe. I think I’ll save my tears for when that Mercedes finally shows up in my driveway one fine, Christmas morning.

Jon Smith is a writer and is interested in topics related to technology. He is a part-time author at TechWench.com