The Arcade/Core model made sense from an Obi Wan Kenobi-like “certain point of view”.
Microsoft needed to fight two fronts, the cheaper Wii and the more expensive PS3. By touting the cheaper Arcade/Core price in both cases they appeared to have price parity with the Wii’s only configuration and were able to look a lot more affordable than the PS3’s most expensive configuration. This is where the from a certain point of view comes in because the 360 Arcade/Core did not compare well features-wise to either of these systems. A more realistic comparison would have been the more expensive Pro model, which would have made the 360 look weaker than both.
From a game development stance, it was a total blunder. But I can’t really fault it’s effect on the 360’s lineup, it’s rock solid from top to bottom.
Might be a stupid question, but when they say hard drive is this a proprietary component to the X-box 360, or since it is based around standard IBM chipsets can I use an IDE or SCSI hard drive? I have plenty of hard drives lying around that I don’t use in my PC anymore.
Since most of the up-front answers have been hidden in pretty long posts:
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The $199 version has NO hard drive at all. You need a hard drive.** (You don’t NEED a hard drive, but you’ll really want one. Even the 20gb is fine - check eBay to see if there’s one for cheaper than $100.)
And keep those HD component cables - they’ll be very useful when you do update. It’s very much worth it. (And keep an eye out for games that get very poor ratings on a standard set, like NCAA Football '07 or Dead Rising - you can’t read any text at all.)
I bought the Arcade, Fallout 3, and Oblivion GOTY version last weekend. It was only when I got home that I noticed that to play the GOTY content you had to have a hard drive. I could have saved myself some money buying the regular Oblivion. The problem is I can’t get too many more games because I won’t be able to save as much.
Have you considered rentals? Gamefly does wonders for the budget and is great for all except the newest titles (which tend to be unable to meet demand).
Another thing the hard drive is good for (I get to find all these things out firsthand since I have an Arcade system ) : NCAA rosters. I don’t have any player names on my NCAA '09 football game because you need a hard drive to transfer them to.
I very much regret getting the cheapo 360, and plan to get a hard drive soon.
A quick ebay search is telling me that $35 is going to get you 20gb HD, which includes shipping. No reason to pop for the 60 or 120gb unless you really want to have a lot of pictures/videos at your fingertips.
If you delete a game you’ve downloaded, you can download it again for free, right?
This may not be a good idea. Certain things are tied to the unit’s internal ID number, one of which is a prohibition against online activity if your unit has been deemed to have been tampered with (e.g. by putting in a workaround chip that allows you to play region-locked games/DVDs out of region).
Microsoft’s not big on listening to appeals on this sort of thing, and a number of consoled were recently banned. Many of these are likely to be making their way to eBay over the next few weeks.
360s also have a tendency to overheat and Microsoft won’t repair them under warranty if you’re not the registered owner of the console.
I wouldn’t buy a second-hand 360, unless I could see it work online first and it was incredibly cheap (cheap enough that I could wear replacing it in six months). YMMV.
) : NCAA rosters. I don’t have any player names on my NCAA '09 football game because you need a hard drive to transfer them to.