Jo

Sorry, my bad about the 468,000 units in November.
We will have to wait until Thursday.

NexGenWars takes the interesting approaching of not providing sources for their data.
Take with a grain of salt..

In North America you can look at NPD sales, and in Japan there's Enterbrain / Media Create.

In terms of units actually bought by consumers, we're looking at 2.9 million in North America at the end of October 2006:

http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=4326&Itemid=2

The consumer sales for November will be released Thursday, but this is the first peek at them:

http://www.smarthouse.com.au/Games_And_Devices/Console?Article=/Games%20And%20Devices/Console/G8D9F8E3

"Microsoft apparently shifted 468,000 units, whilst Industry business boffin Bob Austrian (Banc of America Securities) had predicted sales of 700,000."

So that would put us at 3.37 million in NA.

Total sales in Japan are 191,000 as of last week:
http://www.vgcharts.org/japweekly.php

So that's about 3.56 million not counting Europe (where sales to retail had reached 1 million in June).

They may ship 10 million ("sell" to retail) by the end of the year, but sales to consumers will be well below that.

Even with a fast network connection, you'll be limited by by Microsoft servers.
5+ gigs is large and will take a while.
Joystiq, why don't you download one and tell us how long it took.

Just looking on Amazon, most Blu-Ray and HD-DVD titles are $18-$28 new.
I guess $6 is reasonable, but not a steal.

This is kind of annoying.
How long did it take for the 360 to get background downloading?

Joystiq, IGN updated the article -- they didn't realize that there's a 'Display All' option:


http://ps3.ign.com/articles/745/745359p1.html

"
UPDATE: Hurray, the PS3 can play virtually anything!

In our first look at the PlayStation 3's media playback features, we initially the system to be limited by its directory structure design -- unless media was stored in the proper folder, it would not be read by the PS3. But surprise! With a tap of the Triangle button, the PS3 becomes a fully-formed directory searcher, and can indeed find and play music, photos, videos or playlists from anywhere on most any media device.
"

You need to burn the 7.2gigs to a dual-layer disc. Most newer burners can do this.

But it looks like this one's a fake. Althoughevery released 360 game has indeed been posted to newsgroups.
But honestly modding you 360 (not much harder than ps2, etc) is pretty lame. You just spent $400 on the thing, is it really a big deal to spend the $60/$120 for the 1 or 2 good games that come out every year?

You can get videos of Crackdown, go to gamespot or xboxyde and see for yourself.

It's a visual catastrophe -- imagine the byproduct of Ronald McDonald having butt-sex with Barney. To the powe r of 3.

Hey Joystiq editors:
Whooa there! What's with all this honesty in previews?!
A preview is supposed to be a glowing summary in which everything looks 'great' or 'promising.'
If you see any problems, like for instance terrible framerate, then just say, "We noticed some minor framerate issues, but the devs assured us that these will be soon remedied."

Anyway, this tip is for free. The next time I'll charge. (About $20 a year, like IGN...)

I was thinking that this would be the great system-seller killer app that the 360 needs, but after watching the X06 video I'm not so sure anymore.

They need to show more, that was a very unimpressive demo. Standing in a small circle, waiting for 1-or-2 enemies to spawn out of holes.