Interesting question. It's not just marketing, XboxLive, or the price tag, I think the Xbox brand and Halomania also tap into a disturbing layer of rah-rah imperial ideology.
People from outside the US may not realize just how unglued this society has become. We have a manufacturing base near death, the world's most bloated military ($800 billion/year), the world's trashiest media (which sold us the bogus Clash of Civilizations and War on Terror), the world's most corrupt political class (beholden to $3.5 billion of donations per electoral cycle), crumbling infrastructure (because all our money goes to war), a crumbling health care system (we're 42nd in the world in life expectancy, 36th in infant mortality), a crumbling basic educational system (have I mentioned the endless war thing?), and China/Japan/the EU are financing our vast current account deficit.
This isn't to bash America. I'm an American and deeply love my country, but my country is being slowly dragged under by its Empire, just like the Soviet Union before us.
I think buying an Xbox is weirdly comforting for certain American consumers. An unconscious wish-fulfillment that we're still number one. This was basically the subtext of Halo 3 - the Earth may be a heap of rubble, but the superior firepower of our cybernetic space marines will save the day.
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