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With great frustration, I find the overabundance of misguided preconception and unsubstantiated opinion surrounding Nintendo's Gamecube too much to keep quiet any longer. First and foremost I would like to concede to the fact that I am 22 year old, multi-platform gamer. Since my very early introduction to gaming with my first console, the Atari XE, I have been fortunate enough to have experienced nearly every other console that subsequently followed. Included in this list are the NES, Sega Master System, Turbo Graphics 16, Game Boy, Genesis, Sega CD, Sega 32X, Super NES, 3DO, Jaguar, Lynx, Gamegear, Virtual Boy, Saturn, PS, N64, Game Boy Color, Dreamcast, PS2, XBox, Gamecube and Game Boy Advanced. In addition to all that, I have a background in PC gaming that began all too fondly with the likes of ID's original Wolfenstein 3D and Lucas Arts' original X-Wing. Now for the breakdown: HARDWARE: The first somewhat obvious advantage of the Gamecube is its sheer processing power. The processing architecture is more sophisticated than PS2, making Xbox the better comparative rival. With the help of hardware development giants like IBM, NEC and ATI, Nintendo was able to assemble a very powerful machine that is cost effective from a manufacturing standpoint as well as from the perspective of the software development life cycle. The beauty of the Gamecube's hardware design is in it's high emphasis on multi-processor resource sharing or multicore processing. With a CPU developed by IBM, a main graphics processor developed by ATI and a slew of other hardware components dedicated to graphics shaders like environmental effects, dynamic light sourcing, bump mapping, tri-linear vector shading, DLPII surround sound, resource bottle-necking is minimized. Couple this with super-high-speed DRAM (best showcased in the loading-time-free Metroid Prime), and you've got the potential for more performance than you could ask for. Keeping all of this in mind, let us first take a look at PS2 when making comparison. The PS2's general processing scheme is dependent on 3 separate processors: the CPU and two "Emotion-Engine" co-processors. At first glance one may look at this layout and think, "that's not so bad, sounds like Nintendo's design." The truth is, although the intention of the 3 processors was to share processing burden, only but a handful of software titles for the PS2 have effectively been able to pull this off. A cursory Google search in the matter will yield that realization that the common, major complaint stemming from software development houses is the relative difficulty associated with maximizing output for each of the PS2's processors. Rather than being an automatic component of the hardware (e.g. one processor starts to lag so it automatically routes data crunching to the next processor), whether or not the co-processors go to work is dependent on whether or not that instruction is explicitly stated in the software engine architecture (source code). In most cases, software development houses (especially those who specialize in making cross-platform software) will simply limit processor utilization to the CPU. Take a second to consider how much needs to be processed by the CPU: polygon draw, dynamic light sourcing, shadows, environmental mapping, reflections... this list goes on. Now, to something a little harder to see is the Xbox architecture. Being the fair an honest critic that I am, I have been quite impressed by the visual and audio processing of the Xbox. Coupled with the fact that it has a built-in hard drive and ethernet card, its clear that Microsoft is really thinking ahead here to the future of mutiplayer gaming. However, what turns me off about the Xbox is its incredibly striking resemblance to a PC (e.g. CPU, graphics card, sound card, hard drive setup) and the sheer redundancy of it all - especially as the platform is nearly devoid any real console-specific killer apps. In fact, in many cases PC games have been ported to Xbox. For those of us who already have PC gaming rigs capable of much better graphical experiences than Xbox can offer, the value is just not as compelling. I have enjoyed Halo, but I've enjoyed UT 2003 on my Pentium 4 1.4Ghz / Nvidia GeForce 4 Ti a lot more... especially with my mouse and keyboard. SOFTWARE: This is where the debate can truly get ugly. It's my subjective opinion that Nintendo's Gamecube has the best and most diverse software catalog among all three next-gen platforms. When considering this statement you've got to look at console-specific games. Sure, the PS2 may have a ridiculous slew of games over both Xbox and Gamecube, but consider the fact that you can attribute this to PS2's earlier launch. Generally speaking, the majority of PS2's console specific games were developed from launch through to the first year of release and in many instances have been ported to both Gamecube and Xbox. If there is credit to be had on the PS2 side of things, it's that of the Grand Theft Auto franchise, the Gran Turismo Franchise, and a couple of good RPGs like Suikoden and Zenosaga... but beyond these IPs, there isn't much else in terms of exclusives. Both Metal Gear Solid and Final Fantasy are coming to the Gamecube, so both of those franchises can no longer be used as bargaining chips. Also, consider that Grand Theft Auto exclusivity expires in 2004 - If I'm Rockstar, I follow the money and port, port, port. As for Xbox,, well, one word comes to mind: Halo. That's it. Literally everything else at this point in time is multi-platform. As far as Ninetendo is concerned, you have many more notable exclusive franchises: Metroid, Zelda, Mario, F-Zero, Starfox, Resident Evil, to name only a few. VALUE: $... plus a free game? Are you kidding? Need I say more? Buy it now, you will not be disappointed.