Our very own Ferrex, now of Bungie Studios, has posted a message in the forum at HBO giving his own personal views of the pros and cons of the Xbox compared to PCs or Nintendo's GameCube. Some of the highlights:

PC games are beginning to really struggle, in terms of finances and quality. The market is ruthless... developers have less time and more complex games to make, and even more hardware configurations to support. I can't call to mind any trends which suggest things will get any better--even the market for PCs is cooling off.

Against the GameCube, the advantages are even clearer to Rex-- the $100 is more than fair for better hardware, more launch titles, better developer support, etc.