The Box and Beyond

Microsoft Xbox

$299.99-$499.99 With a half-billion-dollar advertising blitz shelling the gamer's arena in anticipation of its U.S. landing, Microsoft's new Xbox platform hit the bustling November market with all the fury of a D-Day style invasion. Now, firmly bunkered into the drop zone, Xbox finds itself immersed in a bloody two-front war. With PlayStation2 fighting guerrilla-style on one side and Nintendo's Gamecube exploding mortars from the other, Xbox must live up to its sensationalistic hype, lest it get fragged into a relative Dreamcast obscurity. Not to worry, Microsoft's party line might retort. With the platform's sturdily constructed, charcoal gray case, and an already buzz-worthy array of game titles locked and loaded out of the gate, this enfant terrible system is already making inroads as it trudges headlong into the worst trench-war zone ever imagined by the consumer American: the Christmas shopping season. And despite its eye-dazzling graphics, Dolby Surround-enabled system, and sleek design, when the grim monster of winter retail fully rears its head, Xbox will undoubtedly take its lumps as gamers dig out its weaknesses and absorb enough Tylenol to recover from Microsoft's prolonged marketing party. As the smoke clears, shoppers will recognize that some of the highly touted bells and whistles of Xbox are not integrated into the standard unit. Without an add-on DVD kit ($29.99), for instance, Xbox blinks dumbly at your favorite sci-fi classics. Similarly, lacking a separately purchased HDTV AV kit ($19.99), that new high-resolution TV you just bought will never live up to its potential. Additionally, the multiplayer, online gaming nirvana that Xbox promises has yet to merge with reality, as Xbox's cautiously celebrated Ethernet port is not yet fully supported for Internet play. Peripheral concerns and nitpicks aside, Xbox's roaring 733Mhz Intel processor and amazingly robust Nvidia graphics chip are launching its visuals, music, sound, lighting, shading, and particle effects into a realm that will lure gamers into protracted sessions of awe and giddy laughter. From Xbox's flagship title Halo, the lustrous space opera that gives new meaning to the term "all-terrain" vehicle, and the ultra-torqued, high-intensity Project Gotham Racing (so long, Need for Speed series), to the lovingly created Munch's Oddysee, this first batch of games offers great optimism for the new console on the block. Granted, when weighed against delivering on all of the promises Microsoft made for the Xbox, the system may fall shy of an unrivaled Second Coming, but after their first long, dark night bathed in the neon glow of Xbox's onscreen battlefield simulations, gamers will undoubtedly rejoice in the sensation of having beheld a magic-filled totem that transports players into a previously uncharted, unimagined universe.