Plenty of thoughts on the net on the Xbox 360 launch.  Me?  I was going to wait in line but realized I was going to spend 5 hours on a plane with a 2 1/2 year old and 2 hours of sleep before getting up for the trip was a bad idea.  So where is my Xbox 360?  I didn't order.  I beta tested Media Center Extender functionality but given the amount of time I've had lately to game, I haven't been able to justify paying a premium (no pun intended) over MSRP on a box- yet.  Now of course, I'm itching for one.  I call it the "Me Moo Mentality" - yep, the cattle call of a mob.  

First, the insanity around this reminds me of the Cabbage Patch Doll craze of the late 1980's. A guy reportedly held up an Electronics Boutique in Virginia for two Xbox 360s.  I hope they recorded the serial #'s off them so they can find the guy as soon as he logs onto Xbox Live and bust the jackass.  Sure, it's very very cool, but not worth this.  As for whether MS is withholding supply to boost demand- Robert Scoble has an interesting post about this. Did you hear about the guy who had his Xbox 360 stolen? An Xbox employee gave up his personal, unopened box to the victim.  But no, the conspiracy mill will roll over this fact (just as Bill Gates is evil despite the massive amounts of good he does via the B&M Gates Foundation- where are Larry, Steve, and others spending their wealth?)

Michael Gartenberg has a number of interesting posts talking about the end to end experience, Live Arcade (which seems to be custom-made for my wife's demographic of casual gamers) and of course the Media Center Extender functionality. 

One feature I'd like to see more mention of for the legions of Windows XP users is the Windows Media Connect 2.0 support in XBox.  You don't need Media Center to enjoy Music, Photos, and more streamed to your Xbox 360.  It even automatically adds new music to the index, something even the Sonos does not do. Of course, Media Center makes this experience even better but it's great if you haven't upgraded to MCE lately, Windows Media Connect does the trick.

So for me, it looks like I'll be Xbox 360-less for a while. I'll just be patient while legions of kids beg their parents for one this holiday season. You never know- there's always March and my birthday shortly thereafter (the earliest EBGames is guaranteeing).