Most of the primaries have been hit here, but to casy my vote with others I'd say the absolute *musts* are (in no particular order):

• Lost Oddyssey (those stories WERE great, and really made the game).
• Shadow Complex (so much old-school type fun in a HD package).
• Fable 2/Fable 3: fun, action/rpg hybrids.
• Gears 1 and 2 are fantastic games, but you mentioned those.
• If you are going to get Gold, then Left 4 Dead 1 or 2 should both be reasonably priced (maybe you have on Steam?)
• Finally for kinect Dance Central and Kinect Sports are the cream of the kinect launch crop, and very fun games in thier own right, though be prepared to work up a sweat in either!

It fills my heart with pride every time someone displays a lack of bias and embraces.....wait.  Let me check.  Yeah, that's pride.  Like I was saying, it fills my heart with pride every time someone shows that they care more about gaming than anything else and embraces all consoles equally.  Looks like you have your bases covered.  I'd recommend just spending the first day or so getting familiar with the console, the new features, and downloading demos of any game that interests you (definitely try Limbo, Splosion Man, and Shadow Complex).  I doubt you'll regret your console purchase. 

And as for telling your wife about paying for online, do what I did:  Don't tell her shit!!  It's easier on everybody when you lie and hide things.  It makes the relationship stronger.

*edit*  when I started writing this post, nobody had posted yet!  Now everything I said has already been said!!

Well I am also leaning towards buying either a 360 or a WII as my next purchase since my PS3 gave its life to the YLOD. In my country Sony does not repair PS3s but they only replace them and if your PS3 is out of warranty for more than a year then you have to pay 75 percent of the cost of a new PS3 which is huge. I am not happy about this and I wish to buy a console with a less failure rate and I have heard WII is a very reliable console but at the same time I am worried about the games library. So the next best thing seems the 360 slim (quieter and hopefully more reliable than the FAT 360) since Sony's customer service is very expensive and not good at all here but I do like some of their exclusives :(

Sorry If i have been a bit offtopic but I am happy for you that you will get to experience gaming on all the three consoles. I also feel interested in kinect to some extent. However I may not go for kinect even if I purchase a 360 in the future for space issues in my room, since I only have so much space for myself than for a Non Controller based motion Gaming arena lol. I am sure you will have the space thing covered and all the best with your purchase.

I recommend:

• Fable II and III
• Gears of War 1 and 2
• LIMBO
• Super Meat Boy
• Perfect Dark
• Banjo Kazooie and Banjo Tooie
• Shadow Complex
• The Maw
• 'Splosion Man

I would start there. Remember you can try the trials of all games on XBLA, and there's a lot of stuff there, so you might wanna just look around it for awhile and see what appeals to you. Fable II also has a trial that let's you play the first hour or so absolutely free, so I'd check that out. I've played a little Viva Pinata, which I think is pretty good, so you might wanna check that out as well.

Congrats on your purchase!

XBLA exclusives
- available and highly recommendable: Rez HD
- available and recommendable: RISK: Factions
- looks extremely promising and can already be played and purchased prior to launch via "secret" code: ilomilo
- future beauty to keep an eye on: click right picture in my signature

Xbox "original" download for reasonable people who like Tim Schafer games: Psychonauts

CONGRATZ I OWNED A 360 FOR A WHILE MYSELF, I HIGHLY RECOMMEND LOST ODYSSEY IF U NEVER TRIED IT OUT, THATS ALL JNEUL OUT