I don't know. I might wait for PS3. I would like to know what everyone thinks the main differences will be.

Want an Xbox 360? Wait a year.

By Hiawatha Bray, Globe Staff | November 19, 2005

At midnight Tuesday, the waiting ends -- and begins.

That's the day Microsoft starts selling its new Xbox 360 game console. Game geeks have been lusting after the 360 for a year. They can't wait to power up its IBM-engineered liquid-cooled chip and revel in its high-definition graphics.

At least that's what the game geeks tell themselves. Actually, any gamer with a lick of sense cares little about that stuff. What matters are the games. How long before there's a title worthy of the 360's ferocious computing power, something that'll really make it sweat?

Don't plan on buying such a game Tuesday, even if you buy the Xbox 360 to play it on. There are some nice titles ready for the launch, but forget about your quantum leaps. What you've got here is mostly more of the same, plus some more eye shadow.

It figures. Each new console forces game designers to relearn their craft. It takes about a year before they've figured out how to get the most out of a new machine. Remember last year's Halo 2? By the time it hit the shelves, the Xbox was three years old and technically archaic. But by then, Microsoft's game writers understood the Xbox down to the last transistor. As a result, Halo 2 looks spectacular. Indeed, that year-old game looks at least as good as anything in the first batch of 360 software.

Good thing you'll be able to play Halo 2 on the new machine. The 360 isn't actually ''backward-compatible" with older Xbox games, but Microsoft has added some software that lets the 360 simulate the performance of the original machine. This software must be tweaked for each game, so only about 200 old games will run on the 360. A number of hits didn't make the cut, including Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell series.

As for the new titles, the ones written especially for the 360, those I've played are pretty good. Of course, that's not nearly good enough for a machine that's supposed to redefine an industry, but for now it will have to do.

Too bad the most technically impressive 360 game I've tried so far is a horror title. It's hard enough in a theater to cover your eyes without dropping your popcorn; try it while holding a game controller. You'll want to, while playing Sega's new serial-killer thriller, Condemned. In the game, you're cast as an FBI agent who specializes in tracking exactly the sort of people no sensible person would want to find, in places no sane person would want to go.

Not very original, true -- but executed here with dread-inducing efficacy. Condemned's designers use the 360's power to render a gloomy netherworld with unnerving precision. The lighting effects are especially good -- shadows that match the objects that cast them, a flashlight beam that twitches and rolls with your fretful breathing. Walk down a rubbish-littered corridor and you hear the sounds your feet make as they nudge piles of trash or kick pieces of pipe. Only the inevitable corpses are downplayed, their death agonies rendered with merciful imprecision. Just as well. Condemned is more than horrid enough, and in this case that's a good thing.

But with most of the new games, I found myself squinting at the screen in search of something -- anything -- that would justify the 360's $299 price tag. A title like Activision's GUN made my task especially challenging. It's a trigger-happy adventure title set in the Old West, and a pretty good one, too. But the version of the game written for the original Xbox was just as good. In fact, I couldn't see the least difference between them.

There's a lot of pleasure to be had with other 360 games. Take Two's snowboarding game Amped 3 has excellent graphics and a sweet sense of humor. Microsoft's Project Gotham Racing 3 lets you blast through a worldwide auto-racing series along courses that are rendered in impressive detail. Or you can skateboard through a highly realistic Los Angeles in Tony Hawk's American Wasteland, from Activision. Fun, fun, fun. But hardly any more fun than you'd get from an equivalent game run on last year's consoles.

Don't let me scare you off. If you want an Xbox 360, by all means, get one. Then put it in a closet and wait a year. The hardware won't improve over time, but the games certainly will.

I haven't bought a console since, uh, the Nintendo 64. But I really, really, REALLY want to play Madden on Xbox 360. Spending all that money on it, and only being interested in one game doesn't seem all that smart, though.

So to get the most out of the 360, you should probably have a high-def TV?

I don't know. I might wait for PS3. I would like to know what everyone thinks the main differences will be.

i preordered a 360 in august and can't wait to get it on tuesday.

for those who are waiting for a ps3, there's no final hardware yet, so i would expect you will be waiting until 2007.