Picross! DAMN it's addictive. Only 2 more levels and it's all complete.

The final scene with Xerces. I don't know why exactly, but there you go. ;p

It'll replace my beat up Diesel band watch. hooray for progress!

This will definitely make getting christmas presents cheaper, in a year when it's sooo gonna help ;P

A second controller, so we can get our lego star wars 2 on >D

Sith Boba Jawa Jedi will destroy you all!

Gears of War

Lets not forget that content can be generated procedurally. The 360 actually has some special features built into the hardware for generating 3D models on the fly from generic information about an object. (see here http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/cpu/xbox360-1.ars/2 )

Also textures can be procedurally generated (check out this 96KB fps http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.kkrieger) , and good looking next gen games don't need as many FMV's. So I wonder why exactly BlueRay is so necessary now?

There will be games when there is not enough available RAM/CPU power to procedurally generate the content, or when the world is streaming like GTA and disc swaps are not possible. Though I think it may be a while before a game ACTUALLY needs that much space.

"thanks joystiq for ruining my support of nintendo. and thank you, out, for being so... gay."

That is an AWESOME statement coming from someone with the handle "Sgt. Princess".

Link is an interesting choice too, you'd think they would pick a Final Fantasy pretty-boy Character, like Squall or something.

Anyone else getting an earthbound vibe from that picture?

Comparing this to the xbox isn't exactly fair. The hardware is entirely different, its like saying, my dumptruck can get up to 100Km/h, your pickup can do 110Km/h, therefore the pickup must be better.

1. The CPU is a PowerPC, the Xbox CPU is an x86 P3 era celeron. The PowerPC chip in the Revolution is specially designed for the platform (just like all the PowerPC's in the next gen systems), the celeron is a cheap desktop celeron. So there is probably quite a few tweaks with the PowerPC to leverage it for common game code.

2. GPU: The Xbox had an nvidia (geforce 3 class?) GPU, the Revolution's GPU is a custom built ATI GPU. ATI usually runs at a lower clock speed and emphasizes finesses over brute strength. Since the chip is custom built, it is built to leverage itself for common and future game code.

3. The RAM is completely different. If the story is correct the RAM in the revolution is T1 SRAM, thats RAM running at around 600MHz that is almost as fast as the cache in your CPU, it will provide absolutely wicked data rates (like the various types of memory used in the other next gen consoles.) The XBOX used PC133 RAM if I'm not mistaken, poor quality stuff at that. Compare the datarates of your new dual channel P4 with your P3 running PC133 and that will give you an idea of the differences.

Not to be a total jerk, but Ross, be careful when comparing hardware. ;p