Hello XBOX 360, Goodbye Sony!

The migration is complete. My 10 year-old son successfully finished selling his Sony PSP and Playstation 2 consoles and games on eBay and earned enough money to acquire a new XBOX 360 with some games and accessories.

The mark of any good gadget is how much you need to spend on accessories, and boy do they add up for the 360. Wireless controllers, cooling fan, rechargeable batteries and charging systems, plus I decided to upgrade the power strip and video cable for our home entertainment set up. Ouch!

My son ended up with a good selection games: The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Burnout Revenge and Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter. I hope this holds him for awhile since the games are more expensive now, up to $59 a pop.

The 360 has been pretty impressive so far. As my son said, it offers better gameplay and graphics, good integration with online gaming via XBOX Live, a content marketplace and societies (i.e. gaming communities).

Another unexpected benefit was Windows Media Connect, which allows the 360 to wirelessly access all the songs on my notebook, except for the DRM-protected songs purchased at iTunes. We can now listen to music on our stereo via the XBOX 360. Sweet.

The only problem now is the TV. We have a 6 year-old Sony CRT TV, but with prices falling for flat panel high-definition TVs it looks like the 360 will be the driver for upgrading the TV at some point too.

As usual, the gadget spending never ends...