It saddens me to think of the 360 being a last-gen console someday. It is the only console I have owned for over a year (I used to have a habit of trading in a console about every year, coincidentally) and I plan on keeping it until it dies....hopefully it never will.

Now first let me take you on a little story time ride through my console gaming life span.

The first console my family had after I was born was an n64. I played it quite thoroughly; Turok, Duke Nukem, Starfox, Mariokart...etc. But like I said, it was my families, I didn't have my own til years later.

The first console I personally owned was a gamecube, I had that for about a year then I traded it in for an xbox. I never got xbl on original xbox because i couldnt afford it, I was probably in 5th or 6th grade at the time, and my family only had wired internet and it wouldn't have reached my xbox. It was almost time for the xbox 360 to come out and I couldnt afford it, so randomly one day, I don't know what was going through my mind or why I made this decision, I traded in my xbox for a ps2. I was okay with the ps2 for about a week then I never played it. On top of that I got the limited edition mario kart DS, back when the original DS was all there was.

The year after 360 came out the wii and ps3 were released. A couple months before the big duo console release, I was invited to a friends house to play xbox 360. Immediately after I picked up the controller, I knew that something magical was happening. If you are someone who has also had this feeling than you will know how special it is. It is the reason PC gamers love PC, the reason ps3 gamers love ps3, the wii gamers...yeah, and why I love xbox 360. Non-gamers would never understand. It seems a bit drastic as I explain it, it sounds like im describing a new born baby, and while gaming shouldn't be treated like human life, it is still a huge part of who I am because of what it means to me. But back to my story, I picked up the controller, he put in gears of war, and I was in heaven.....A couple hours later I was posting my ps2 and DS to ebay, I was going to get an xbox 360. My heart was set on this console, and so was my money.

The day before the Wii came out, I went to gamestop to buy an xbox 360 with the money I got from selling my DS and ps2. I only had enough for an Xbox 360 Core ( which eventually became the xbox arcade) refurbished. The guy told me not to buy it because used 360's, back in the day, were trouble. Red Rings, people overheating them by keeping them on the rug too long, problems that wouldn't be figured out until the owner of the used device took it home. Instead, the guy pointed me in the direction of the wii, he said, and I quote "This is way better than the 360." I looked over all the games that were to come out the next day and was not very impressed. Then, the worst happened, I went over to the wii station where you could try it out, and I loved it. But it wasn't true love, it was a dirty one-night stand. I said, "IM GONNA BUY THIS!" to my dad...the next day I woke up at 5 am and went out with my dad and 2 friends to buy that damned thing. I tried KMart, they were sold out, then Circuit City, they were sold out, then finally Sears where they had many in stock. I waited by the door till they opened, and I bought the wii. I took it home and played the racing game (I honestly dont remember what its called) for 9 hours. I felt satisfied, but it was a short lived satisfaction.

About a month later I became absolutely hateful of the wii. AND DON'T GET ME WRONG, EVERYTHING IN THIS BLOG POST IS MY OPINION, SOME PEOPLE LOVE THE WII AND IM OKAY WITH THAT, SO DONT WHINE JUST BECAUSE I DONT LIKE IT.....yeah. I had a classmate offer me 600 dollars for it. I asked my mom if that was okay and she said no because I just got it. So i kept it and bought some gamecube games and just played those for a couple weeks. Then my relationship was over. Maybe once a month I would play wii tennis for a couple minutes. This lasted about a year until one of my good friend bought an xbox 360.

I went to his house to play his new 360 and I remembered again the feeling I got while playing it for the first time. I was in love, I felt like i had betrayed the 360 and I cheated on it with the Wii, but its just like the romantic comedies, the guy always gets back with the girl he truly loves. It had been 2 years since I got the wii and I was a freshman in highschool. I asked my mom when she picked me up from my friends house if I could trade in my wii for a 360, and to my glorious surprise she said yes. So we went at 5 o'clock...gamestop...trading...$450 credit...new xbox 360 pro...The Orange Box...Halo 3.....Heaven. I brought that baby home and I played it like I was a 5 year old at disneyland, a feeling I have never felt before with a console. A month later and I got xbl, heavens gates were opened and I walked in. (Forgive all the heaven talk, Im not implying that the xbox is GOD or anything...) And to this day, a senior in highschool, I still have the xbox and I still love it as much as I did the very first day I got it. 

I am not afraid of change, but when the new xbox comes out, it will be like my wife just died and I get remarried. It won't be a bad thing, but it will be the end of a glorious era. If microsoft decided to keep making 360 games for another 50 years and never come out with a new console, I would be happy as a clam. 

I'm sure I will LOOVE the next gen microsoft console as much as I love the 360, but the 360 was, and is my first true console LOVE.

-ChezterCheeta