Prediction: The Xbox won't age well as a console.

[bangtango]

If, let's say Madden '05 was coming out and you wanted the game and had all of the systems what would you choose. The GC version which will not have online play, probably lesser graphics than even the PS2 version, and will require you to buy a 251 block memory card if you want to create a custom roster, and will probably miss a few extras compared to the PS and XBox version. The PS2 version which will probably crawl when loading your custom rosters and every menu you go into, and have a lackluster online mode (if any) or the Xbox version which eliminates all of those problems. Remember this is the release week and all 3 versions cost $50. To me the choice is easy.

In the defense of the Gamecube and PS2, Madden 05 (or any of the Madden's) play fine on there when the game is in progress.

But yeah, the better graphics, faster loading times and hard drive capabilities make all the difference in the world.

I have eight sports games on the Gamecube (football/basketball) and have them spread across 2 memory cards, both of which are chock full just from the Franchise mode in each game. I don't have enough blocks remaining to save the settings or my user records in half of those games. That is asinine.

Meanwhile, I've got 20-25 franchise modes going on right now on Xbox, maybe more, spread across numerous sports titles. Custom rosters, seasons, franchises, tournament modes, created players, user records, settings, some games with 2 simultaneous franchise modes. The whole nine yards. That hard drive has got a ton of room left. I could have twice the amount of stuff on there and still be left with lots of space.

The low price of the Gamecube may have been appealing to some people but not to a guy like me who had to go out and pay for 2 memory cards just to hold a fraction of the content that the Xbox hard drive can. That's $40-50 more right there. It got to the point where I quit buying GC sports stuff since I wouldn't have room for them on a memory card anyway and didn't feel like turning a $10 used game into a $30-35 purchase (by getting another memory card). No thanks. Let the next sucker fall for that.