Convince me to buy an XBox 360

The Game Room
81

This whole argument that crops up over PC vs Console is stale and silly. Nothing is stopping anyone from owning both. If you have little enough money that you need to worry about it, then you probably shouldn’t have either, in most cases.

But let’s talk about why you would want to buy a 360.

First, you have live. Live has tons of features, including streaming netflix, automatic patches for games, generally good matchmaking, built in voice chat for everything. Having a friends list is nice, you always have people to play most games with. Achievements sound silly too, but they are a cool thing, a little bit of bragging rights and some extra gameplay objectives, and a sense of completion.

The console itself is easy to set up, has a lot of available games, and looks very good on your hi-def TV.

One big draw is that you can get gamefly or go to blockbuster and rent games. I’ve played a lot of games that I would not buy, and gotten enjoyment out of them. There’s no install procedure or any messing about. There are also a lot more used titles available, so you can build a permanent library pretty easily.

Secondly, if you think FPS on a console is worse than on a PC with a mouse, you might or might not be right. But every other player is using a controller too, and you can easily get good enough that you aren’t going to be thinking how much better this would be with a mouse.

I’ve never had a problem with MS tech support; when my console died, I had another one within a week. They also threw in a free month of XBL.

So here’s my take: I’ve had a 360 since Gears of War, and I use it every day, either for gaming or for netflix. It can be fun when I have friends over – PCs generally not so much. I don’t have to mess with it or get drivers or worry about viruses or anything else. It’s a pretty inexpensive purchase that has more than paid for itself. You really won’t go wrong buying a 360, or even one of the other consoles, although I feel that the 360 has the best combination of good games, online functionality, price, and graphics.

Frankly, the only hurdle I see in the OP is platform/genre snobbery.

82

Spoken like a true high school student.

83

Yep. So close to finishing the post, too.

84

Oh, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to make you feel bad by slaughtering your sacred cow.

85

For real? That’s what you think I was objecting to? It totally went over your head that I was implying that the average adult can’t just drop $200-$600 for a PC or PS3 or Wii or Xbox 360 or DS or PSP whenever they feel like?

I don’t know about you (or how old you are, but I’m gonna guess under 19) but after I pay all the bills, my bank account doesn’t have a lot of money left over for another system. In fact, I’d bet the average adult would think I was nuts for owning a DS and a 360 and a Wii.

But to say “nothing is stopping you from owning both” is woefully naive.

86

Hrm. Well, I’m not going to imply (that’s too advanced for one of my tender years) that you are probably a poor college kid or something.

If you can’t afford a console, you’re probably not an average adult. I guess this high schooler is doing really well.

87

But not passing reading comprehension it seems. Let’s see, in my post above I mentioned…

a) that I own multiple consoles, but that I considered them major purchases, because…
b) I have multiple bills

Please note, when I refer to bills I am not referring to “Lunch - Monday”, “Lunch - Tuesday”, “Lunch - Wednesday”, etc, etc. Not, I am referring to a mortgage, student loans, heat, electricity, groceries (not snacks, groceries), etc, etc. Trust me, I am well beyond my college years (although I am currently finishing up a graduate degree, so half credit for you).

88

My argument has always been that everyone has a PC. So the real cost of PC gaming is what it would cost to make your current or your next purchase a gaming rig. In most cases that’s under $200. In some it’s more.

But yeah, I don;t follow Ivn’s logic here. I can see that price is a barrier for anyoen who isn’t a kid with rich parents, or isn’t rich himself.

I wish I was rich. Like 10 million dollar rich. I would buy… eh, am I thinking out loud again?

89

Wow, you two are just really not getting it.

OP is considering a 360. Obviously, he can afford one, or (wait for it) he wouldn’t be considering buying a 360. I gave him several reasons why the 360 is a good buy if you’re in the market for a console. Gratz me on trying to answer the OP instead of worrying about his budget or my degree of leetness because of what I use to play games on.

A bunch of other people decided to have a pissing contest between PC and console. Those people are doing nothing more than rehashing an old, tired argument that is pointless anyway.

Of course, it’s always easier to throw out some snark and fail to contribute anything worthwhile. Oh, and good job on the graduate degree work. I got mine a while back. pretty impressive for a 19 year old.

90

All well and good, but that doesn’t really fit with the part I objected to…

You’re saying if you’ve got the money you should absolutely buy both, no questions asked, everything else is “silly”. While the OP was asking about the quality of games and whether or not he should spring for a 360 in addition to his PC. The whole thread was started with the intention of being more or less console vs PC (or at least console vs wallet). So your “this is silly” argument is a bit out of place.

(Oh, and you still need to work on your reading comprehension as if you read back over the thread, you’ll see I was one of the 360’s leading cheerleaders. I hate PC gaming, so why you thought you were “slaughtering my sacred cow” by coming out in favor of the 360 is beyond me)

91

You’re missing the bit where he says if you can’t afford both then you probably shouldn’t have any. That is, if buying a game console or a gaming PC is a huge expense for you then you’re probably better spending that money on something else. It’s still simplistic but he’s not saying that everyone should just go and buy lots of stuff.

Edit: Can someone please explain what the problem is with playing downloaded games on another console?

92

Even if a person has the money to buy several consoles, is that the best use of that money for that person? I can afford to buy a PS3, and a Wii, and a couple of portable gaming systems. I can only play one system at a time, though, and I already have an SNES, a PS2, and an XBox 360 set up and ready to go at home, plus my computer. And yes, I’ve played with all of them this week. The thing is, do I want to go out and spend still more money on another system when that money could buy me some more books, instead? It’s resource management. I’d rather buy ONE current gen system that will fulfill most of my needs, and then buy lots more books, rather than buy two or more current gen systems, and look at the system that I’m not playing on and think that I should have just bought one or the other.

There’s also the question of space. My house is not small, but it’s not huge, either, and I’m constantly going through things and asking myself if I really need them. Before I go to the bookstore, I go through a box or two of my older books, to see if I can’t bear to part with some of them. Another gaming console is going to take up some space that I’m not willing to give up.

93

There is no problem really.

For the Xbox 360, downloaded games can be played on your “home” console with no problems. But to play them on a second console, you need be logged in to your Xbox Live account so the system verifies you as someone who purchased that game. But this is a pain and it’s why people say you can only really play them on one console.

94

Ah HA! I knew it! You play PC games! I totally caught you dude. You play WOW until the wee hours and you own a leet gaming mouse, don’t you, don’t you?! You’re PCLover360 on Steam, aren’t you?

:smiley:

95

So what’s the deal with the following quote then?

What is a license transfer procedure and when is it required? As I said before, I play online purchased games on a different console every couple of weeks and I just recover my gamertag each time, no trouble.

96

I’m not a dude. :stuck_out_tongue:

I’m scared to try WoW or Everquest. My husband has to travel on business occasionally, and I just KNOW that he’d come home to find me dead in front of the computer, and the cats yowling because they haven’t had any scritchies for a few days. I used to play Gemstone III/IV, and that was bad enough. Nowadays I play Improbable Island. Both of those games are text-based.

Otherwise, I usually play OFFLINE games. Yes, I know this concept is foreign to many of you. I no longer have the reflexes to play twitch games, though. I tend to play games like Arcanum, Fallout and FO2, and CivIII. I play things like backgammon, reversi, and mah jong both online and against my computer. I haven’t played Nethack in a while, and I’ve been thinking of starting up a new game. When I was a kid, nobody would play games like reversi and backgammon with me after a few games…because I hardly ever lost.

I’m a night owl, and yes, I do play during the wee hours.

97

May I suggest you join us over at the Dragon Age thread then? It sounds like it’s a game right up your alley.

98

There’s a recover gamertag option on the Xbox…but if there’s a problem with the Xbox that ISN’T hard disk related, you just keep the HD when you ship the Xbox back. The licensing and data stay with the Hard Disk. The quote strikes me as incorrect.

99

Every XBLA game is linked to two things a home console and a gamertag. So this allows you to play the games in one of two different ways:

  1. You can turn on your console at home and play the XBLA game using any gamertag currently saved on that console.

  2. You can be playing on someone else’s 360 and you log in with your gamertag, you can now play any of the game’s you’ve previously downloaded on your home console.

A license transfer procedure is when you want to change which 360 is considered your home console. This can only be done once a year.

It’s actually a truly elegant system and far as DRM goes, is actually quite fair. I’m not sure why people bitch about it so much. Sure, I’d like to “own” the XBLA games I bought too and have the ability to resell them, but it’ll take time before companies will agree to something like that.

100

Having been on the wrong end of it more than once, I can tell you exactly why I loathe the DRM on XBL.

Assuming your console has broken and you replaced it through the retailer, rather than Microsoft (or do you prefer an hour on the phone with India, repeatedly plugging and unplugging the power cable, until they eventually agree to send you a cardboard “coffin”, so you can get your console back in a week or two?)

Anyway, assuming the above.

[ol]
[li]What if your console is somewhere in your house that (gasp!) doesn’t have Internet access? Or you took it on a trip somewhere? Sorry, can’t play your games. I guess you could always buy the $100 wireless adapter from Microsoft and hope for the best.[/li][li]What if your significant other or some other family member wants to play the game on the console, and track their achievements? Sorry, they have to sign in as their own ID, and sign in as you to get “authorized” to play the purchased game. A huge effort? No, but a pain. And it still requires Internet access.[/li][li]What if Microsoft some day decides that running the XBox Live DRM servers isn’t financially viable? They turn them off, and suddenly your purchased games and content no longer work. This would never happen, right?[/li][li]Ethically, when I’ve bought a game, why should I have to go online every time for permission to play, merely because (due to shoddy manufacturing) my console broke?[/li][/ol]
As for the once-a-year license transfer – yes, it’s better than nothing, and I suspect Microsoft did it to ward off the looming class action; at one point there was a 50+ page list of rants about it on the XBox forums. And of course it’s inconceivable that two consoles would break in one year…:rolleyes:

The best thing that can be said for it is that this new approach is better than previous ones they have tried, but if that isn’t “damning with faint praise”, I don’t know what is.

I love my 360. It’s a great console, with a huge selection of every type of game. But I’ve stopped buying content on XBL, and they really blew it on the DRM.