To play with multiple friends online using PCs, each friend has to have a really nice PC. I suppose you could have a lan-party type thing where you all get your computers together and play, but a single Xbox can allow 4 people to play online in the same room.

If anything, the Xbox is at least half decent. Nintendo's console almost always has a large majority of games aimed at younger people. The Playstation has been rocking out the sports and racing type games a lot(it's actually quite rediculous now.) Just because the Xbox has games that you can also play on PC (imagine that, microsoft making games for their console that are playable on their computers) doesn't mean that it sucks. Some games that the Xbox has would take a hell of a computer to run, which would cost a lot more. Some people prefer to play console games rather than computer games.