they play xbox in japan? (ok it's a game company but anyway!) 

I think there were like 8 xboxes sold in october...
totalling to ~120 since the beginning of the year. source - NPD

xbox360 numbers are much bigger but still way ps2 

way below ps2 

So, my question goes to the XBOX360 owners here who DO NOT have an HDTV: Is the XBOX360 noticably superior to othe original XBOX in visual quality assuming you are using a regular widescreen TV (and not HDTV) ? 

I've never seen an 360 on hdtv but in terms of graphics quality you just need to look at gears of war in action and its easy to tell that its way ahead of the xbox 

It's hard for me to judge the 360 on a NON-HDTV TV and I've _ONLY_ seen it demoed on HDTV's in stores and thefore dont have the slightest idea about what kind of quality I should expect if I was to get the 360 since I don't have an HDTV myself. 

are just the console rendering in higher resolution. That's the only difference - no bells and whistles are enabled in 720 or 1080 that aren't in 480, the same assets are used across all settings ... it's just the same picture on a different size TV.

Universally.

Oh wait I guess I pissed off Shambler by mentioning a non-PC game so he had to change the thread title. I'd better not post this then! 

I think the best solution is to get a widescreen PC monitor, smth like those 21" Samsungs (215TW) or bigger. With all kinds of TV-ins.
You get a very good PC monitor, and also can plug a console into it and enjoy high resolution. I recon you would get a picture superior to almost any TV.

x360 games are QA-ed for 720p
hence u have unreadable text in Rise of the Dead (as the most famous problem with lowrez displays)

gah, we`v been thru it few times at TF 

In the recent news Lost Planet (another x360 game from capcom http://games.teamxbox.com/xbox-360/1369/Lost-Planet) also has tiny font unreadable on lowres TV, but capcom promised to fix the issue 

So I thought about selling my GC so I could have a little money to put towards buying a Wii, but then I realized there would be almost no buyers because the Wii can do exactly what the GC does, and more. :|

Oh well. I'll probably wait until a better selection of games comes out, and I see a bundle that I really like.

And I have to agree, it doesn't look like the Wii has a whole lot of really strong release titles. Mario Galaxies might be cool, although from the previews I've seen, mostly the game doesn't take place in the traditional Mario land fantasy world, which for me was one of the draws of the other games. 

since I never use it and if I get a wii it won't have any function at all.. but yeah the problem is that most likely won't be anyone at all that wants to buy one and on top of that it might be nice to keep the gc-controller but then selling the console without a controller will be even more hopeless *sigh*

My fear is that it will become a piece of completely use and worthless electronics unless some one comes up with some good use of any of the components in it :/ 

Boring, pointless. 

what GC games do u have? 

Alien Hominid, Killer 7, Zelda Collection, MK, MP, NFS:HP2, POP:SOT, POP:TT, POP:WW, RE1, RE2, Sonic Collection, Smuggler's Run, Viewtiful Joe.

...I just realized that I haven't beat half of those. 

I have games that are still in the shrink-wrap. Like resident evil 4, and max payne 2 (the latter for the PC, obviously.) 

My computer is full of fantasy games and RPG games...

Have got:

Gothic 3
Guild Wars Nightfall
Thief 3
Vampire: Assquerade

And am going to buy:

Dark Messiah
Warhammer Mark Of Chaos

Funny, I spend ages wanting some good, proper, fantasy games, and then dozens of them come along at once... 

Yeah, I seem to also be playing mostly Fantasy games these days, seem to be releasing more of them (maybe cause of the success of LotR or something?)
Played Oblivion, Dark Messiah, Thief 3, and Final Fantasy 3 (but that's a console game, so I'll say no more, or Shambler might devour me).

You seemed so pumped up about Dark Messiah Shamb, yet you haven't gotten around to playing it? Was wondering how you'd find it... 

Dark Messiah, yeah very cool, but then this thing called Gothic3 came along....o_O

Might end up finding the full G3 so buggy compared to the demo that I give up and play DM instead O_o 

Neg!ke, so far I *have* to run post-processing at full, otherwise I get huge amounts of see-through textures in the landscape - yay, go G3, go! Full PP is okay, the distance blur is interesting but I can take it or leave it - do you know any way around that particular bug?? 

Yeah, POP:WW and Dues Ex 2 (PC) are still in the shrink wrap. So was Q4 until this summer, and POP:TT until a month ago.

And I still haven't been able to play HL2! 

dunno about the third (full) setting of PP as it doesn't work for me - all sprites/shaders turn into black rectangles or something. likely related to my graphics card (only have a radion 9600pro). what about the lighting on full setting? is it still overly bright around torches/candles? 'distance blur' as in standard fog-like effect or something more sophisticated? not sure about the distance rendering setting either, i guess i have both sliders on medium, since max distance would slow my rig down too much, or i'm just too scared to try it, or whatever - with 2gb RAM it should work better, i guess. on the other hand, i'm using 4x AA / shadows disabled. performance isn't really the problem in this game, the preloading is (and the fucking long quickload/save times).

btw. do yourself a favor and play on hard difficulty. there are only few frustrating moments. monsters might be quite hard at first, but at least orcs/npcs are a little less weak.
we'll see what the next patch (next week?) brings...

oh, and a little gameplay tip: if you beat up enemies they only drop wornout weapons, but if you knock them out with those headbutt-arrows, they drop a fully functional weapon. this way, you can make proper use of the powerful orc weapons or even the best weapon in the game: an ogre hammer (with the appropriate amount of strength points of course). ;) 

Lighting is a little bit bright in a few places - the only time it's looked bad is in the Cape Dun fighting ring.

The distance blur really is distance blur, i.e. everything in the distance is blurred. Like the artificial depth of field you get tweaking a picture in photoshop. I think I might stick with it as it stops the funny effect where the terrain "pops" into more detail as you get closer.

Funnily enough, although both the new card and new ram definitely help matters (woohoo, shadows on, woohoo, teleporting into a town without 30 seconds of pausing), I have got some random slowdowns in funny places - going into Dun after 1 hour of play, it chugged like a bitch until I restarted.

BTW, how do headknocks work? I presume you have to aim at the head, and that they work on humanoids?

And can you change difficulty in game? I'm already a few (useful) hours in... 

headknocks work on any creature (npcs, monsters). i don't know if you have to specifically hit the head, although it can't be wrong as headshots do more damage anyway, but i think it's important to deplete their health entirely with headknocks. i recently tried to knock out some ogres by first hurting them with regular arrows and doing the final shot with a headknock, but they just died.

difficulty can be changed in game at any time. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JxS-njEUVc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mjh4f4p43kU 

I never played Cave Story. :(