There are plenty of great single player games and even the multiplayer games like Gears and CoD4, the single player experiences are still great fun.

Note-- I rarely if ever play online and I love my 360 and I don't really even play RPG's that much (look at the GamerCard for what I play).

without online-- no

with online-- yes

Even without play in the live (it is very very rarely), I love my 360, and I am happy that I have one. The ps3 have great exclusives, but Gears of War is unique (for me) and have a solid campaign, Halo 3 have an excelent multiplayer and a fantastic single player, I don't played too much Mass Effect, but I can tell you that this game is awesome! I think that you should see the exclusive games of each console, I choose the 360 because of the Gears of War. What you think about see a walkthrough of some exclusives and make your decision? Here is 2 walkthrougs of the Gears of war, these videos helped me a lot and I saw that Gears of War was what I wanted, and not God of War:

I've played a total of one online match on my 360 before. So yes, it can be done.

360's have tons of offline multiplayer games, so it's not a bad deal.

I would deffinately get a 360 and the first game you should get is Dead Rising!  That game is full of untold goodness.  I rarely play games that aren't multiplayer but this one keeps drawing me back even after all of this time.  There are a lot of other games that I find are great as well.  Don't forget you can still try out live (gold) for free, and do it up to 3 or 4 times.  So that would get you through the first 3 or 4 months.

Dead Rising is relaxing. 

I had Gold ever since 2003. Played Mechwarrior online back on the Xbox. Hardly played online with 360. The only thing that it's good for, for me, is Netflix and early demos. There really isn't anything that interests me to play online with. Maybe if there is a multi-player RPG I would play online.

There's plenty good offline gaming to be had on the 360.

Actually Live is the best choice for most games that have online capabilities. There are plenty of games on the 360 that don't need to be used online. 

IMHO yes for jRPGs I plan to do get one later this year :D

Definitely a good choice... and since you're not too wild about playing online or DLC on the 360, just pick up the arcade version for $199 now, that way later on if you do decide you wanna buy games on Xbox Live or download demos and install your games you can just pick up the 60GB hard drive pack for $99, which ends up costing you the same as if you had just purchased a Pro model outright.


Slightly off topic... I really don't understand why some people still have issues with paying for XBL Gold to play games online. I mean, it's no more than $50 for a 13 month membership... that's less than what 95% of new 360 or PS3 games cost, and about as much as most of us pay to have high speed internet access PER MONTH!! And if you're savvy like myself (proud cheap-ass gamer lol), you can just pick up a Gold membership card on Amazon.com cheaper or wait till a big box retailer has it on sale and pick one up there!