I don't own an Xbox 360. Yet. I want one like crazy. I still love/play my Xbox at least as much as my Wii and PS2, and will slap anyone who thinks it's either past it's prime (Exhibit A) or limited for games (Exhibit B). With the lack of FPS games on the Wii, and the boneriffic FIFA graphics on the 360, I really, really, REALLY want a 360.

But it's going to have to wait. Why? Well...

1) Halo 3 ain't out yet. Microsoft stopped to notice the white elephant in the room and pointed out that the title will help them sell consoles, and sure, it's going to probably represent my tipping point. Almost.

2) The Elite is neat, but not quite enough to break me down on the hardware front. No, this ain't going to do it for me either. I'm waiting for chips - smaller ones, to be exact. With the hellish BTU count and scary red-ring-of-death frequency of the old 90 nm cores, I'll be counting the days till the fall release of systems featuring the 65 nm cores. Then it's time to buy.

Microsoft will undoubtedly be grateful, since my late fall purchase will undoubtedly be their own tipping point, pushing them from the red squarely into the black: 2008 is thought to be the first time Microsoft will actually make money from their Xbox division. Remember, ever since the Xbox 1.0, Microsoft has taken a hundreds-of-dollars hit per console that still hurt with each sale only until just recently, so this is a big deal for them.