360 Question

[Misty]

I'm thinking about getting an XBOX 360. Yeah, it took a while for me to finally get convinced in wanting to get one. Well, Goufunaki had a lot to do with it. Plus, my friend paid a visit last night and he was talking about Gears of War all of a sudden. For some reason, it got me researching Blue Dragon and Last Remnant.

So I am thinking of buying one this or next month. But I don't think I'll get into XBox Live right away--perhaps maybe near the end of the year I will consider investing in it. But I am seriously considering getting a 360 soon.

Which brings me to this question. There are two different 360 packages. One that comes with a Hard Drive, and one that is basically just the core system itself. The latter is the cheapest, and quite affordable. But the other package comes with a handy hard drive. I am stuck at a crossroads. Do I save money and just go core or go ahead and splurge for the Hard Drive, too?

I'm missing out on some good games for the 360, plus there's that Marketplace where you can download arcade games. As much as I like the VC, this girl has always had a soft spot for old coin-ops. Plus, many of them are enhanced in HD.

So which package deal do you recommend for me?

[DK]

Re: 360 Question

Core system = for idiots.

[DarkwingChuck]

Re: 360 Question

Actually there's three packages now with the new 360 Elite which is black, has an HDMI port and comes with a 120 GB drive instead of the 20 gig. Also, the 120 hdd is available on its own.

Anyway, with the exception of stumbling across some good deals, your best bet is the Premium with the 20 gig hard drive. If you got the Core you'd need to buy the memory card to be able to save games so that brings the savings down. Factor in the cables, headset, and wireless controller and free month of Live that comes with the Premium and it's much a better value. And since you'll need the hard drive eventually in order to use Live and the Marketplace you may as well get it now.

[Red Dragon]

Re: 360 Question

I thought they discontinued the core system though.

I wish I could get a 360, but I am happy with my Wii. Don't have enough cash to spend on both

[Naruto]

Re: 360 Question

They're not discontinuing the Core. They eventually want to get it down to $150 and have it compete price-wise with the Wii. But yeah, the Core is for suckers. A 360 is no good without a HD. That being said, I'd wait and see what happens at E3. I think they'll announce a price cut there. With Sony likely to announce one at E3 as well, I think MS could end up lowering the price of all 3 of their SKUs. I think they will lower the price of the Premium to $300, the Core to $200, and the Elite to $400. Another thing to keep in mind is that MS will start rolling out 360s with the new, cheaper, cooler, processor that is less likely to red ring your box after the holydays.

[Goufunaki]

Re: 360 Question

Definitely the one with the hard drive, since there's a lot of trailers and demos to download, you'll run out of space quick. I also recommend it for ripping CDs, I have over 1200 songs on mine so far. Just play them at random and it's all good.


Although if you eventually want the 120gb hard drive, buy the core first then the 120gb drive. Mainly because the 20gb would be about $100 (which adds up to the Xbox+HDD package anyways), while the 120gb is $180. For me, it's just priced better for what you get. But you'll need a hard drive or memory card anyways to save your profile somewhere.

When you first create an account, it gives you Gold membership for one month free. Basically the main point in paying for Xbox Live is to play multiplayer. WIth a free silver account you can still send/receive messages and have a friend list and have voice chatting.

And if you buy the vision camera, video chatting. I tried mine when I sent an invite to my brother's 360 and the video had no problem even though we were both wireless. Although the game it came with was unplayable for me, i'm swinging my arms like an idiot and the damn thing wasn't really responding.

[Ryner]

Re: 360 Question

You'll definately want the hard drive for downloading demos, XBL arcade games, and just for the ease of not having to use a memory card.

[Goufunaki]

Re: 360 Question

I bought a memory card just so I don't have to carry my HDD to places. Guitar Hero for example, I wanted my cousins to be able to play all the songs I unlocked, but then games like Dead or Alive 4 still prevent you from transferring your data, which is a pain in the ass. None of my other games prevent you from moving/copying files.

[thetruecoolness]

Re: 360 Question

They're not discontinuing the Core. They eventually want to get it down to $150 and have it compete price-wise with the Wii. But yeah, the Core is for suckers. A 360 is no good without a HD. That being said, I'd wait and see what happens at E3. I think they'll announce a price cut there. With Sony likely to announce one at E3 as well, I think MS could end up lowering the price of all 3 of their SKUs. I think they will lower the price of the Premium to $300, the Core to $200, and the Elite to $400. Another thing to keep in mind is that MS will start rolling out 360s with the new, cheaper, cooler, processor that is less likely to red ring your box after the holydays.

Hmm, this news might delay my purchase then. You got a source on this new processor info.

But yeah overall price wise I think the Elite would be the better purchase, as you can only use one HD with the 360 (well until the Mod community comes up with a way to bypass all the proprietary walls keeping you from backing up your own data, which they probably already have), and the 120GB HD is a ripoff at $180, you can get 500GB HDs for less than that for PCs with much better performance (if only 360 didn't use proprietary HDs, which really makes no sense besides more $$$ to MS directly, though maybe the modding community has found a way to use normal HDs too). I imagine if you keep tons of demos, music and if you ever purchase any downloadable video you'll wish you had the extra space. Don't think it will be as big of an issue for just saves and Live Arcade games though, so if you're just going to do that then 20GB would likely be enough, considering the largest the Wii can have is 4GB, as that seems to be the limit of normal SD cards.

I bought a memory card just so I don't have to carry my HDD to places. Guitar Hero for example, I wanted my cousins to be able to play all the songs I unlocked, but then games like Dead or Alive 4 still prevent you from transferring your data, which is a pain in the ass. None of my other games prevent you from moving/copying files.

Happened on the original XBox as well, though that was mainly due to some save files (KOTOR comes to mind) being too big to fit on the memory card.

[Goufunaki]

Re: 360 Question

Tecmo games never really had large files though. They just do it to be annoying.

[Misty]

Re: 360 Question

That sucks that some games don't allow transfer saves

The Elite models are tough to locate--my friend was telling me last night that he was lucky enough to get the last one at a Best Buy the night he went. From what I hear from him, they're as scarce to find as a Wii. But, yeah, I'll shoot for the Premium package. I don't mind spending a little more money so long as I have an essential unit included.

Uhhh....you don't really need an HD television to enjoy the 360, right? My friend was bragging about the quality of Gears of War being clean and smooth on an HD television set. I don't have an HD TV set, so if I were to play like, say, Dead Rising or Gears of War, per se, the quality wouldn't suffer as much on a regular old TV as opposed to an HD set? I mean, I will get an HD TV very soon in the future, but for now I'll have to make due with what I've got.

Also, another reason why I want to buy a 360 is because there are certain games that were exclusive to PS3 that are being ported to the 360. One of them being Virtua Fighter 5. The others being....quite possibly....Final Fantasy XIII and Grand Theft Auto IV.

[Goufunaki]

Re: 360 Question

Uhhh....you don't really need an HD television to enjoy the 360, right? My friend was bragging about the quality of Gears of War being clean and smooth on an HD television set. I don't have an HD TV set, so if I were to play like, say, Dead Rising or Gears of War, per se, the quality wouldn't suffer as much on a regular old TV as opposed to an HD set? I mean, I will get an HD TV very soon in the future, but for now I'll have to make due with what I've got.

Gears of War looks just fine on a regular TV, but Dead Rising's text is real small, so you'll have a lot of trouble reading it since info comes up a lot.

[thetruecoolness]

Re: 360 Question

I like MS's explanation for the high HD cost

28. Why does the Xbox 360 hard drive costs ten times more than a PC hard drive of the same size?

The Xbox 360 hard drive is a 2.5” hard drive, similar to those found in notebooks. The hard drive that you buy for your PC are 3.5”. Considering that notebook parts are always more expensive than desktop PC components, it is reasonable that the Xbox 360 hard drive costs more than a desktop PC hard drive of the same size.

Even though Laptop size external harddrives still cost half as much for the same capacity at about $90. So I wonder what their excuse there is.

As for HD TVs I know of a good 24" Monitor and HDTV for like $680 (after rebate) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16824014124. Has all the inputs as well (HDMI, Component, Composite, SVideo, DVI and DSUB). Somewhat small, but certainly good and it has 1920x1200 resolution something most larger HDTVs don't have (1080p stops at 1920x1080). You can find somewhat cheaper ones at BestBuy as well, though some don't have all the connections, but this is what I'll be getting soon.

But text is really going to be the only thing that suffers when not viewed in HD, as normal TVs are actually really good with 3D graphics, it's just high resolution text they suck at showing.

[DarkwingChuck]

Re: 360 Question

This is a bit off topic but related to Misty's last question. What about widescreen. If you have a regular 3:4 tv is it better to set the console to widescreen or keep the standard ratio?

[thetruecoolness]

Re: 360 Question

This is a bit off topic but related to Misty's last question. What about widescreen. If you have a regular 3:4 tv is it better to set the console to widescreen or keep the standard ratio?

I imagine it depends on the game, as I believe most of them usually come with both standard and widescreen resolutions (just like most modern PC games). Not that I know as I don't own one, but if you're playing full screen and notice things look too wide, then switch to widescreen. Pretty sure they don't ever do pan and scan ever like movies do when converted to full screen aspect ratio, where you end up missing part of the shot (which is why you always buy movies in widescreen no matter what you're screen is, because you can miss out on details in full screen).