"REDMOND, Wash. — Dec. 1, 2008 — Microsoft Corp.’s Xbox 360 video game and entertainment system kicked off the holidays with record-breaking console sales on one of the biggest shopping weekends of the year in the U.S. Retailers reported Xbox 360 console sales over the Black Friday weekend were on pace to beat previous years, outselling the PlayStation 3 by a three-to-one ratio and estimating a 25 percent increase from Xbox 360 Black Friday sales figures from 2007." - Thomas Hawk from Bookmarklet

outsold PS3 three to one. wow. - Thomas Hawk

I saw a guy buying 6 Wii Fits two weeks ago from the grey market. In India. Wow. - Yuvi

I have to say wandering around Best Buy on black Friday, it was impressive to see two full aisles of stuff for the XB360. - Phil Glockner

the XBox 360 is Microsoft's trojan horse towards taking over the living room of tomorrow. Just you watch. They are positioning it to be so much more than a game machine. This will all unfold in the next few years as the cable/satellite industry gets crushed. Stage one is to get as many of them into the hands of the general public as possible. - Thomas Hawk

hmmm - A. T.

+1 Thomas - Shey

XBoxes make great little webservers, once you install Linux on them. ;-) - April Russo

Thomas, I have to agree with you. They have already made big strides toward taking away any reason why someone would want to hack the XB360 for additional features. A web browser and/or YouTube (or even Hulu) support is a miss, but otherwise it supports media center, DivX, uPNP, DVD, rip music and games to HDD, the works. Oh, and now NetFlix streaming. - Phil Glockner

I just bought a used one from a tech friend (price was way right, clean unit), installed it last night, and I was blown away at how great it looks over HDMI. Not only that, but the movie and TV offerings was exactly how I got it passed by the 'finance committee' :D - Bob M. Montgomery from twhirl

LOL Matt. Price and, I would add, MS has not announced a new version and the current line is still good for, at least, another year. - Robert Miller

I love that I can hook up my Zune to my Xbox 360 - Shey

Shey, not only does a Zune work great, but it even controls an iPod with ease, after installing a tiny free download. - Phil Glockner

You know, I'd give up my PS3 and switch to XBOX 360 if it could play Blu-Ray discs. Those movies in 1080P and non-compressed audio are just a blast. - Odi Kosmatos

Nothing can touch how useful the Live! compenent of the 360 is... its simply awesome. - Soulhuntre from twhirl

I agree - the 360 is great on a multitude of levels. Can't say I've ever used a PS3, but I also can't say I ever regretted getting a 360. I use it to listen to music while I do things around the house, I use it to show photos to friends, I use it to watch video from my computer on the big screen, now I get to use it for watching streaming Netflix movies... and of course I use it to school chumps in Halo. - Tom Harrison

@Tom Harrison , how has the Netflix + 360 experience been? worth the Live Gold membership? - Joel Tanner

@Thomas. The noise that the damn thing makes will put most people off using it for anything but games. I bet most consumers don't even realise that it can be used as a media player. - Paul Grav

Paul, the new units are far, far, quieter than the original ones. Interestingly, when I sent my two original units in for repair, MSFT returned 2 new ones to me that were *far* quieter than the original units. I think they've got the noise problem down now. - Thomas Hawk

The last one I just received from repair is way way quieter. you don't even notice it running now. - Jason Shultz from twhirl

Also, the new desktop OS lets you rip a game to the hard disk, so it's faster and doesn't activate the DVD drive while playing, which results in a lot less noise and heat. - Kevin Fox

I bought one yesterday, for the game Lips. ;) - Paul Whitaker

@Joel Tanner $7.99 for Gold + $8.99 for Netflix, I would say that's a fine price for watching streaming movies instantly on my TV. That is especially considering I frequently buy PPV movies from cable, which I won't do anymore. The Netflix video quality is very good, and I've watched 3 movies so far without getting any buffering or lag. My only complaint is that there are many, many, many movies that are not available for streaming. - Tom Harrison

I remember back when On Demand channels came out - it was quite apparent "on demand" is the future of entertainment (except of course for things such as sporting events, to which there is a significant draw to watching live). Netflix and Microsoft are absolutely on the right track with this. I'd cancel cable TV if I wasn't the only one in the house. - Tom Harrison

I'd cancel my cable but crappy AT&T forces me to buy TV from them if I want their high speed fiber UVerse internet service. Somehow that seems wrong to me. - Thomas Hawk

I know. I totally don't want their TV service but am essentially paying for it anyways because I value faster internet that much. I think that they should let me cancel the TV service and just pay for the internet. - Thomas Hawk

The NXE with Netflix streaming is the best thing to happen to the Xbox in a while. I'm getting so much more use out of it now.. and Rock Band 2 is awesome. The starting price of $200 for the Xbox 360 Arcade must have opened a lot of eyes this holiday season. - Rodfather

I've heard you can get a u-verse package, then cancel the TV and keep the internet. Haven't been willing to try it myself though. - invariant

I'm not surprised...I've played both and I love my Xbox 360 even with the latest goofy update that 'Wii-ified' with silly avatar crap...which I ignore. I think Sony just blew it, plain and simple, with that launch. - Rich Harris