Kamal

Last night, the world was subjected to MicroSoft’s hype machine “revolving” around the new XBOX 360. Yes, for one painfully long half-hour, inbetween MTV’s embedded commercials for MTV2 and Pimp My Ride, the “whole” world got to see less than five minutes of glossy, pre-packaged exposure of the anorexic game machine in between The Killers’ wailings.

Elijah Wood looked like he was concentrating on the size of his paycheck to stay awake as he woodenly recited from the Tele-prompter how much our lives sucked before the 360 came along to deliver us from our anti-aliased sins.

What did we learn about the new system? Um, it’s white. But, just like your cell phoneóyou kids like cell phones, right?óyou can customize the first inch of your XBOX with some snazzy faceplates.

Oh, and you can go broke paying MicroSoft for an entire brand-name wardrobe for virtual characters. I say, why wait 8 months? Just walk into your local Old Navy and set your wallet on fire. It’ll probably be more entertaining.

Last night’s message seemed to scream only one thing: “No geeks allowed.” There was no information on the processor, the hard drive, the peripherals; hell, they didn’t even say one word about the damn controller. None of that seemed more important than how well Wilmer Valderrama can play Perfect Dark Zero. (He sucked, by the way.)

The only thing I learned last night is that all MicroSoft wanted to be the first out of the gate, trying to distract North America from what is going to be a fierce battle between them and Sony for the next generation of impressionable youths.