So, my friends, I mentioned here some time ago that I purchased an Xbox 360. I've been meaning to share my reflections on the system, which are overwhelmingly positive--I really thought I was wasting my money when I bought it, but I play the Xbox much more than any other gaming system I own, with only the Nintendo DS even coming close. But I've never bothered to write a review of the system or anything, because it always occurs to me that the limited time I have to devote to video games would be best spent playing video games, not prattling on about them on some unread blog.

But you'll be pleased to know I'll have lots of time to write about the Xbox 360, because I won't be playing mine; yes, if you're at all knowledgeable about the system, you've probably already guessed, but for the rest of you: this evening, I started up the system to play one last round of Guitar Hero II before bed, to discover the Red Ring of Death. Three red lights around the power button which indicates a general hardware failure. I knew about Microsoft's billion-dollar warranty extention to cover the Red Ring of Death, and intellectually I knew it was almost a certainty the console would fail at some point, but still in my heart I believed it only happend to bad people, who sold poisoned milk to schoolchildren. But now it happened to me. So I'll be without Stuntman: Ignition, Lumines Live and Guitar Hero II for the forseeable future. But hey, that just means more time for Super Mario Galaxy on the Wii (and yes, the game's just as awesome as everyone says).

My controller has never seemed to work quite right, so I'm going to get that fixed while I'm at it.

E3, the big (though scaled-down this year) video game convention, is this week, and by now Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft have all had their keynote addresses. Nothing of note announced by Sony, that I can tell (PSP slim, Home can run on a mobile phone). But I paid more attention to Microsoft and Nintendo, since I own their platforms.

Microsoft didn't announce anything too earth-shattering (nor did Nintendo...it was all rather underwhelming). The Halo-themed Xbox 360 looks like ass. Scene-It is coming to the console, which is being met mostly with jokes about the bundled controllers. I think it actually looks interesting, especially if the controllers are utilized with other trivia games (You Don't Know Jack for the Live Arcade, anyone?). But their biggest announcement was probably the arrival of Disney movies to the Live Marketplace, in HD. I have yet to rent a movie via the download service. I'll probably try it out sometime (I noticed today that The Fountain is available in HD, though other movies I'd really like to see in HD, like Pan's Labyrinth, are only available in standard-definition), but the service strikes me as a questionable value proposition. $6 to rent a HD movie is a tad steep, methinks. I'll stick to Netflix and standard-definition DVDs on my upscaling DVD player. HD is nice, but as long as its widescreen, I don't see the reason to pay $6/movie, when I'm not paying Netflix much more for a month's worth of unlimited (essentially) movies (albeit without instant gratification).

Nintendo's press conference also wasn't earth-shattering, though they did announce Mario Kart Wii, and confirmed release dates in 2007 for the big three (Super Mario Galaxy, Metroid Prime 3, and Super Smash Brothers Brawl). They finally revealed the Wii Zapper, but I'll have to learn more about how it's utilized before I make the plunge (I'm not buying it unless it lets me shoot that snickering Duck Hunt dog). But the big announcement on the Nintendo front was regarding Wii Health Pack, now called WiiFit. It will apparently come bundled with a pressure-sensitive pad that can measure your weight, center of gravity, and movement, while putting you through a series of exercises. I think this is absolutely awesome. I loved the concept of EyeToy: Kinetic, a PlayStation 2 exercise game which used a camera attachment to put you in the game, but ridiculous lighting requirements and other limitations of the camera made it an exercise in futility (hee-hee). So it remains to be seen if WiiFit works well, but I have very high hopes for this game.

So that's my summary of what looked to me like the big news of E3. Nothing major, but just enough to make me feel like I'm getting my money's worth from both the Wii and Xbox 360. I do intend to write a review of my Xbox 360, now that I've had it a few months, but that will wait for another day.

Report: Amazon set to debut online music service next month. If they launch such a service, I'm sure they will only do so in a DRM-free form (rumors swirrled a few weeks ago that Amazon was going to buy eMusic, but nothing came of it). I did think it interesting to read in one report of a rumored Universal/Amazon partnership that Amazon was considering launching a store based on Microsoft's Plays for Sure DRM, but abandoned it when Microsoft announced the Zune. It was widely noted at the time that the Zune was a real slap in the face for anyone who partnered with Microsoft on the DRM front, but this is the first I've heard of any serious ramifications from the whole Zune debacle.