I see that Microsoft has some bundles on sale this Xmas and I’m a bit confused…
You can get a 4 gb bundled with Kinect, or you can get a 250 gb bundled with some games. My question: there is a big difference between 4 & 250 - why is this? It seems odd that there is nothing in between. The hard drive is used primarily for loading games so that you don’t have to have the disk?
Any info on this decision would be greatly appreciated!
The 4GB consoles only have built-in flash storage, sort of like a USB drive. The 250GB uses an actual HDD, which pretty much don’t come smaller than 250GB these days. The older models had smaller HDDs, but those are now obsolete. The hard drive is used to store many things, like downloaded movies, demos, and even games so that they load faster (than they would from the DVD.)
You probably want one with an HDD, but you can always had one later if your budget doesn’t accommodate it.
To elaborate on this a little bit more (if the window of utility on this information hasn’t already passed), the value of having a hard drive is that you can store any kind of downloadable…stuff on your machine. While you might initially think “Meh, so what, I don’t really want to download anything”, sooner or later, you will. First off, there are certain required updates for games - somebody releases a patch or something for a game, you may be required to download that update before you can run it. Those need to be stored somewhere. Sure, you probably won’t fill up 4GB with these too fast, but then you consider… there are a TON OF REALLY GOOD games on Xbox Live Arcade. In fact, I probably spend more time on XBLA games than I do on the high-budget boxed offerings these days. And they ALL have absolutely free demos (which are often basically the full game with portions disabled, rather than a ‘reduced size’ demo.). While most of these will be in couple-of-hundred megabytes range, some of the bigger ones can run above a gig. Plus, there’s various kinds of downloadable content you can acquire to add to these games, sometimes even for free. That needs to go somewhere too. Then there are “apps” - a lot of the new Xbox Dashboard functionality (Like, say, the MSNBC one) are basically downloaded applications that need to be stored. And then of course, if you want, you can download music and/or videos to play on the 360. And then there’s saved games - though those usually don’t amount to much. And last but not least, you CAN install games to your hard drive too, though this does NOT obviate the need for the disk (For piracy reasons, I expect), but it can substantially improve loading times and reduce heat and wear on your console. (Not really a problem for newer ones.)
So that is why you want storage, and why you may exceed 4GB. The probable reason that they don’t offer “in between” options is partly because they want you to buy the big version, and partly because you can use any USB storage device with your 360 - though you are limited to 16GB on any particular device, so attaching a big USB hard drive won’t do you any good. Still, you can use two of them, so you can add 32GB of storage for about $32 in the form of cheap USB memory sticks, and that can last a pretty good while if you manage carefully.
So those are your options - you really probably want more than the 4GB of storage. Whether you need more than the 20GB you get from the 4GB model + a $16 flash memory stick might be another question, and the same again for adding MORE storage. Of course, at any time, you can buy the hard drive for the difference between the 4GB model and the 250GB model.
I just got an Xbox360 with the 250GB hard drive, and I am SO glad I have the hard drive. Just downloadable content alone will probably fill that pretty quickly, and that’s just for the disc based games. Access to Xbox Live Arcade games pretty much requires that you have more than 4GB, just because you’ll be storing the whole game on the disk, and some of them are big (I already bought two). I’ve already downloaded about 6 GB in demos, and I’ve only had the console for 3 days.
Do you have to get an “XBox branded” hard drive, or will any HD do?
It must be Xbox 360 branded. But you can usually get the 120GB ones on Amazon/eBay for a pretty steep discount.