But at least the updates usually take under 30 seconds to receive, and don't have an "install" process to sit through. In less than a minute, you're back to what you were doing before.

I can private chat with up to 4 (I think) other people over Xbox Live, no matter what game I/they am playing, or whether they're even playing a game or not. We can even quit games and start new ones without disrupting the chat at all.

I talk to a friend of mine like this all the time. It's great, and it's something that you'll probably never see on PSN. MS was thinking WAY forward when they designed the 360's OS and network structure.

Some of the features of Live's content are also far superior. There are literally several HUNDRED retail game demos, and *every* purchasable downloadable title--100% of them--can be tried before buying. Most of PSN's games and all of WiiWare cannot be sampled. Lame, lame, lame.

BTW, you don't even need to pay for Xbox Live to take advantage of private chat or game trials. But I'd expect that subscribers help pay for bandwidth. Makes no difference to me...I'm getting real value out of my $3/month, as far as I'm concerned.

That may be true, but if you lose a soldier "permanently" during a battle, you can simply load the game back from your last save, and try the battle again. Since FFT's battles are short, it's not a big penalty.

The similar game Fire Emblem (except for the recent Wii version) has a harsher penalty for death. You can still load back your previous save, but if you do, you have to begin the whole chapter over again, which usually means 1-2 hours of your time vanish. At times, you will just need to face the fact...your character died and they're not coming back.

One thing that you have always been able to do on Xbox 360 over Xbox Live is have a private chat with friends. You can do this with up to 4 people. It doesn't matter if you're all playing different games, or if you're all sitting on the dashboard; you can chat anyway.

You cannot do this on PS3.

Furthermore, this is not a paid service; any user connected to Xbox Live can do it whether they've paid or not.

Also, I like being able to game lag-free without having to use DMZ or forward a ridiculous number of ports on my router (for 360, it's 3. for PS3, it's over 10, if you count all of the recommended ones).

Xbox Live is a superior service and is worth every penny I pay for it.

No, it doesn't. I plug it, my PS3 and my original Xbox into a $50 wireless bridge/switch.

They have two kinds of controllers: wired and wireless. They work on your PC (or Mac) too so it's kind of like you're buying two controllers in one. The headsets will work with your computer as well.

Most iterations of the 360 come with HD video cables; all iterations of the PS3 do not.

It is no more difficult to pick through the 360's accessories than it is any other console's...

I resurrected an old game on Xbox 360, in the new Community Games area...and I think it works!

http://www.snake360.com/

It's Snake. Surely you've heard of Snake. But now it has 3D graphics, 300 levels, co-op play, Internet ranking and two battle modes for up to 4 players.

If you've enjoyed Snake before you may want to check it out =)

For anyone who didn't know, one of the new features is Xbox Live Community Games, a service that allows independent developers to create games and upload them to the service.

So currently there are 32 games up and 8 more should hopefully join them sometime today. There's a lot of variety in there. You probably won't like them all, but you can try them all for free.

Among the games that should hopefully go live today is Snake360, a new 3D version of Snake that I put together myself over 11 months. 200+ levels, 4-player battles, co-op play, Internet Ranking, blah blah blah. =) You can see more at www.snake360.com; the full version costs the equivalent of $5.

I definitely think my game is worth buying but it's most definitely not the only one. Enjoy them!