BlueAlloy

Huh, the first time I loaded OBlivion it took quite a while in a loading screen. After that load times were really quick. I guess the reason is because they are storing alot of stuff on the HDD. Didn't know that but it makes sense. The fragmentation thing sounds like a concern that I've had for a while. Need some sort of defragmenting software from MS if this whole download/delete thing is gonna work. This is the only thing that would solve this problem, unless you want that huge loadtime everytime you booted the game (which I would rather do without).

"Boy oh boy. If that isn't the biggest letdown..."

Looks fine to me and on par with what Kameo looks like. I see Parallax Mapping, soft shadows, and high res models.

Just because you have great hardware doesn't mean that all titles are going to look like MGS4 or Gears of War.

This is what bugs me most about so called "next-gen" systems. All you are really getting is the equivalent of a high end PC set-up. This isn't a bad thing, it's a great thing, but all development teams are different and can have drastically different budgets. You better believe that Microsoft and Sony's flagship titles are going to have millions upon millions of dollars thrown at them to show off the amazing power, but don't expect that to be the norm. Look at PC games for an example, sure there are amazing games that push the limit and make you want to buy a new graphics card, but the majority of them don't look that amazing. It is true that developers scales things down in the PC world to make games playable for a wider audience, but the size of the budget really determines how polished a game can look more then we think.

I am a graphics-whore at heart, but just because all next-gen games don't look like Doc. Brown brought them back from the future doesn't mean they won't be fun.

Oh, one other rant. Most of the time, the next-gen things that we see aren't coming out for a few years. I've found in my experience that the graphics we see in these games are usually pretty standard when the games finally arrives, so just take the screen shots as a little glimpse into what will be coming out in 1-2 years.

Just because I know I'm going to be called a Sonyfanboy, I only own an Xbox and Xbox360. I say bring on the competition. I really hope both companies have to fight hard for dominance as that will bring more benefits to me the consumer. Who knows, maybe Sony will do what Microsoft did to Internet Browsers and offer a free solution that is just as good as Live. That way I wouldn't have to pay for it anymore!