I didn’t buy a 360. Sure, it’s true that I haven’t even seen an XBox 360 as of yet at the stores, but even if I’d come across one hidden in the back of a sales rack that everyone else had missed, I’m not sure I would have picked it up.

Given I’ve constantly harped about gameplay over graphics, this may not come as a surprise to a lot of Zen readers. It’s not that I don’t appreciate great graphics. But really, I don’t buy a console for ports of games that appear on other consoles. The 360 desperately needs an exclusive game made with it in mind.

And this isn’t just for exclusivity’s sake. Right now, virtually all of the 360 titles are ports of games that appeared elsewhere. And they just don’t look that much better. 1Up offers this surprisingly snarky analysis of the launch ports, and concludes that the 360 just isn’t offering the next generation promised.

To be fair, this is less about the power of the 360 than it is the emphasis the various dev teams have towards 360-exclusive feaures. Why devote all of that time and money on using the brightest and best features of the 360, when most of your sales are going to be on the Original Flava Xbox, PS2 and the GameCube.

In retrospect, this was a smart move on the developers’ part, given the 360 has only sold 600K units so far according to NPD. Mostly, this is due to hardware shortages rather than a shortage of desire for the machines. Still, Microsoft has historically been unwilling to pay developers what exclusivity will cost them. The end result is a rather uninspired launch lineup filled largely by ports.

Speaking of 1Up and the 360, here’s a great interview where 1Up talks to Peter Moore, forcing the Microsoft Spinmeister to spin like a top as 1Up relentlessly pings him about poor performance, reported 360 malfunctions, a lame launch lineup and bizarre choices in backwards compatibility with Original XBox games. Definitely worth reading if you’re tired of game journalism that usually overfellates the subject matter.