The Coming of the Anti-Christ/Xbox 360

The marketing strategy behind the launch of the new Xbox 360 could be likened to the allied invasion of Normandy Beach during WWII. The goal was to make grown men drool over this console like a bunch of schoolgirls on crack, and it very nearly worked. Hundreds were duped into paying twice the $400 asking price for what some have dubbed the ‘crash box”.

I’ll admit I was sold myself. To a gamer that still has fresh memories of the old Atari 2600, an event like this was tantamount to the return of Jesus Christ himself. Had my wallet been a little fatter last Tuesday, I might have been one of the poor lost souls waiting in line for hours only to be disappointed when I got the damn thing home and it didn’t work.

The event itself has overshadowed the holiday season. Instead of tracking Santa’s sleigh like they have in the past years, local news stations will instead track the Xbox shipments as they find their way to hundreds of rural Wal Mart's all around the country. Gamers will be circling outside the malls like vultures waiting to pick clean any shelves containing the beast, even after they find out that the 360 is as unstable as Charles Manson on crack.

Apparently, not only is the quality lacking on this Anti-Christ in a box, but so is the quantity. Early reports have the systems going for over $800 a pop on E-bay. There simply isn’t a big enough supply for little Johnny to wake up on Christmas morning and find a wireless controller taking up that sweet spot underneath the tree. Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus, and no, he doesn’t have any Xbox 360’s.

I caught my first glimpse of the monster late last night. At first, it was as if I had laid my eyes upon the Holy Grail itself. Then, after one lap into the racing game, it froze, and quickly became a nightmare the likes of which will make a sane man shit nuts. “This is suppose to be a console, not a god damn PC” I was later quoted as complaining.

If Yoda was around, he would have felt the disturbance in the force. “It’s as though millions of voices screamed out in joy and were silenced suddenly” the small Jedi would utter forebodingly about the time the first of the machines started to freeze up like a Wisconsin winter.

Somewhere, Bill Gates is sitting back, not even bothering to count the money he fleeced from this debacle, laughing at the gaming community as a whole. He “pWn3d” us in the worst way possible, and didn’t even bother to give us a courtesy reach around.
What’s worse is somewhere halfway across the globe a room full of old Japanese businessmen are licking their chops, waiting to do us the very same way in a few short months with the coming release of the PS3.

Then you have us, the herd, the flock, the prey of the week, waiting for the lions to hunt us like dogs, rip the money out of our bank accounts, and feast on our blood like the ravenous creatures they are.

And on that note, I would like to wish everyone here at Shoutwire a Happy Holidays. Try not to get eaten.

Shoutwire