Sometimes this port is favourable over the PC version...
There is a twist though. Monsters come out in the dark, and there is a day/night cycle. You generally want to build your house before the monsters arrive using what you can find. From there, you can expand. You can create massive mines to find rare minerals, experiment with redstone circuitry and create farms.
Now that the basic concept is here, let's talk about how the translation from PC to Xbox went. Due to the fact that there are completely different control schemes, certain things had to change. The crafting system tells you every combination of items. This change is for the better since most players ended up using a wiki on the PC version.
This version also has all the features as of the 1.6 beta of Minecraft, so it is not finished as such... But the base gameplay is still there. The biggest blow of all though, is that the world is only 1024 x 1024 in block size. This is annoying, since the world will be block by a giant invisible wall... But it isn't that much of a blow since you still get a more than satisfactory randomly generated area to play around...
Also, you barely notice this in multiplayer. You'll be having too much fun crafting your world with friends. You can fit up to 8 players in an xbox live game, which is more than enough. Unlike the PC version, any map can be played on multiplayer. Starting single player no longer means that you won't be able to invite friends to your world. The multiplayer experience is extremely intuitive compared to the PC.
On the PC version, you have to run a server. This can be a hard task. Here, all you need to do is click on your friend and press the invite button, or you can just get a friend to press start on his controller to drop in via split screen, which is a lot of fun.. The only issues I had in multiplayer were glitches present on the PC version... Which is what I want to talk about.
The similarity to the PC version is striking, considering both versions are running on two completely different program languages. The PC version was written in Java, while this console version is written in C++. Despite this, both of the games seem to inhabit the same engine issues, except the Xbox 360 version is generally much smoother.
The issues caused by the programming language and the server method of connecting to multiplayer on the PC make this Xbox version more preferable in a lot of cases. It is extremely simple to jump in and play despite the missing features (That are coming) and the scaled back world size. If you have never been introduced to Minecraft before, this is the best way to go. The ease of access compared to the PC version makes the ol' controller the more fun option in a lot of cases.