@786_ali

So what is holding you back now?  If you are SOOO worried about your theoretical 360 breaking.  That you have been too scared to get one.  You really don't have a valid excuse anymore.  If you get one in about a month you will get a Jasper chip set more than likely, and I don’t think you would ever see a failure.  I have a Falcon and have had no problems at all to date.  I have two friends with Xenons and they have not seen this failure that you speak of.  Just read up about what you are talking about a little that’s all I ask.

Well dont I feel silly. 786_ali was banned in between the time that I took me to make my write up and post... hehe.

Well as a new 360 owner I am excited and happy!

Despite the plethora of Sony fanboy's here that severely need my particular brand of ownage, I'd actually like to respond to the OP for a change.

I believe the Microsoft, and eventually all gaming studios, are gonna move away from releasing the occasional game, and instead focus on less games with more hype and selling power behind them.

These tent-pole titles, as they're known in the movie industry, will do far more for the success of the console, than an above average game once a year will. This is the same strategy Sony has incorporated, as you can see they've been touting their tent-pole titles since the console's launch, but we've actually yet to see one(with the exception of the 3rd party MGS4, and the Gran Turismo demo, neither of which quality as a significant showing on the part of Sony). This proves that people will buy a console on hype and 3rd party support, if nothing else. The promise of a tent-pole title is far greater than the reality of an above average first party game.

The cutting of Ensemble is indicative of this. They aren't exactly a tent-pole developer. They're a secondary development unit. They aren't high profile enough to garner any name recognition, nor have they developed anything significant to pad their resume and qualify them as a company worthy of dumping tens of millions of dollars in on a tent-pole bet, as far as I know.

So yeah, there that is.

Dumping ensemble is orphaning hundreds of thousands of pc gamers. PC devs going down because of the console division needs is a bummer no matter how it's been spun.

why exactly have they got rid of ensemble?

I'm glad I didn't miss this article, it makes sense for MS to collect all its best pieces and start from scratch.

Microsoft has to reorganize there first party. When bioware and bizarre got bought by bigger studios and bungie left they didn't have much else besides lionhead and rare. they need to set up there own studios and put togethere there own ip's. Look at sony they have so many studios and so many employees, but only a few games are getting put out and there are constant delays and even games getting canceled. there not very efficient. Microsoft doesn't want that they want to be closer to the studios and projects