I've been growing my 360 collection recently and this first year where it was the only "next gen" console on the block fascinates me.

I feel like this window gets overlooked a lot cos most players were still gaming on 6th gen platforms and so for them the 7th gen hadn't really "started yet" but there were some real bangers during this period; Condemned, COD2, Project Gotham Racing 3, FEAR, Burnout Revenge, King Kong, Prey, etc.

I didn't get my 360 til 2009 so I missed this period, but its really interesting to explore in retrospect.

Did anyone here grab one early on and experience this period firsthand?

My friend got one shortly after launch and Project Gotham Racing 3 was enough for me to see the potential, even if some of the other games available weren't big jumps over the 6th generation. It certainly didn't have anything at launch even close to Halo on the original Xbox but the higher resolution really popped and the controller was infinitely better.

I think we got one close to launch, iirc a 20gb model. No hdmi but we only had SD TV anyway. PGR3 graphics still blew my mind when you're walking around the garage.

I don't really remember getting any other games for it that early. Hexic HD was free, and then I remember playing demos but that's it. We traded it in for a PS3 once that came out.

Later we got a 360 again, a fat 60gb model in 2008-2009.

The era of PS2/360 multi-plat is very interesting. Especially when the 360 ports messed with the lighting or added insane bloom and the PS2 version actually looked better in some ways lol.

Project Gotham Racing 3 must have looked insane back in the day, when we were all used to 6th gen graphics.

For me COD2 and Condemned were the best launch titles; yeah neither was as iconic as Halo 1 but still, excellent games.

Yeah that era felt very experimental in that devs suddenly had all these new tools and techniques and were still playing around with how to best use them. You do get some somewhat weird looking games as a result, but for me that's part of the charm.

I actually played Quake 4 last month (cool game but whoa that framerate) and plan to give Kameo and PDZ a second chance later this year. (Didn't like them back in the day, but maybe I've mellowed with age haha) 

My favorite early 360 game is still NBA 2K6 its still one of the easiest games to get all the achievements for it also. You can unlock them all in a single game easily as long as you set the quarter time to 12 minutes and use one of the better teams. As for somewhat early 360 games Dead Rising is still my favorite that is why I rebought it numerous times.

Of course the elephant in the room is Gears of War, sneaking in just days before the release of the PS3 and a couple weeks before the 360's one year anniversary, which completely redefined what a "next gen" game could be.

While I do think the second and third game bested the first, Gears 1 is still a stellar experience that blew my mind when I first saw it, even if I didn't get around to actually playing it til a few years later. I can scarcely imagine how insane it must have been to play it back when 6th gen graphics were the norm.

Since I worked as an assistant manager at a Gamestop early 360 years,Wii and PS3. I have a certain affinity for that time. I only had a Wii at the time because I was broke. But early 360 esp facinates me esp the lesser known games from good to not so good. I remember so many games we had on that 360 shelf. Games I saw daily that no one now remembers. Shadowrun Reboot. Pimp My Ride. Culdcept. Blazing Angels. Bulletwitch. R* Table Tennis.Eragon. King Kong. Battlestations Midway. Wartech. Slypheed. Fatal Inertia. Eternal Sonata. Stuntman Ignotion.Monster Madness. Conan. Timeshift. Golden Compass. Overlord. Operation Darkness. Ninety Nine Knights. Full Auto. Some History Channel Civil War game. Superman Returns. Fusion Frenzy 2. Star Trek Legacy and many many more. Again these are just what I remember of games people probably forgot. I didn't forget all the big names in that span or some well known bad games like Bomberman Act Zero. In that long list there is some good. Some meh and some rotten. Still to me for the first 2 years no console had a more interesting lineup than the the 360 that generation.


Some games like GRAW pre Gears my co-workers talked about nonstop. Now never hear anyone talk about it.

Some of those I retro actively would buy. Bulletwitch being one of them. It's not very good but I kinda like it. Something charming about it. To think this is Cavia who did the good Ghost in the Shell PS2 game. Nier. But had a major miss with this lol. Enchanted Arms was the first "JRPG" on 360 developed by From Software. It's a so so game. (From had the first RPG on PS1 and PS2 I think as well) While everyone remembers Gears. I also like Lost Planet. I could talk about the big names like anyone but what fascinates me more about that early era are the forgotten games. Good or bad. Like Vampire Rain. Consider one of if not the worst 360 games.

Our PS3 wall was very small. Peak era of "PS3 has no games!" Wii was a "fad" Our PSP wall was half UMD movies. 360 was out second largest wall. PS2 being the largest. In just a year 360 had a shit ton of games.

I remember some of those; I quite liked King Kong, Overlord, Timeshift, Sylpheed. Part of what makes this era so interesting to me is it's this kind of weird but intriguing hybrid of 6th gen and 7th gen philosophies.