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.