[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][/quote]
I can see it being a pain if other people want to play your games and track their own achievements (though maybe they should buy it themselves in that case), but you only need to access the internet once to recover your gamer tag then you can play your games offline, so it’s no big hassle if it’s just you, you don’t need to be online to play your games.
I have two Xboxes, one at home and one about 1500 miles away, I visit Xbox 2 every two weeks and play all my downloaded games on it just fine offline after I’ve recovered my gamertag (I don’t need to do a license transfer.) Or I can take my hard drive with me and I don’t need to recover my gamertag, I can just play the games, no internet access required. So yeah, I see the problem with other people wanting to play your games IF they feel the need to track their achievements, but I think you’re blowing the rest of it way out of proportion.
I take that back, after some quick experimentation I see that you do need to be online to play downloaded games on a second Xbox. That would suck in the circumstances you describe.
I think your choice should largely come down to the game library. But I suspect the total cost of ownership and hassle would be better with a PS3.
MS charges twice as much for a hard drive as what they should cost. On a PS3 you can use any USB device for external storage or any 2.5" IDE drive for the internal hard drive. You could do it yourself, but sounds like MS will be disabling “unauthorized” storage devices on the XB360 with a future patch. Article here.
And on the XB360 the wireless adapter is $76! Should be about $25. The PS3 includes wireless.
Not only that, but there’s the problem of trying to explain to your spouse, who just wants it to work (“Why can’t I play Feeding Frenzy?!”), that she has to sign in as you, and make sure there’s Internet access etc. My wife ends up just not bothering…
It used to be over $100! I’ve found a way around this, though. For ~$50 or so you can get a wonderful Linksys WRT54G router, upgrade the firmware and use it as a wireless repeater. It then acts both as a router and as a wireless adapter for your 360. Works great.
Absolutely correct. I’m a geek, but even I experienced some trepidation when flashing with the DD-WRT firmware, having read warnings about “bricking” the router irretrievably. Definitely not for the faint of heart, or anyone who wants things to “just work”, which is one of the motivations for getting a console in the first place.
I use my laptop for an internet connection when I’m away. Connect Xbox to laptop via ethernet cable, set the laptop’s wireless connection to be shared and away you go.
A great reason is getting to use Yoda in Soul Calibur 4
It also integrated easily as a media extender for my Vista Ultimate PC. So now I watch downloaded stuff on the real tv instead of on a 19" small screen.