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360 price cut, a few questions...

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I know nothing about the 360, I guess this might not be the best place for it, but I thought if anyone'd know and be impartial, you guys would. Basically, I need a beginner's guide to the 260 :)

 

Hard Drive - How much am I likely to use on it spacewise? More importantly, how easy is it to buy a bigger hard drive and fit it yourself? I assume it isn't some specially designed 360 HDD.

XBL - The big thing on the 360. What are the costs of XBL, games on XBL, etc etc?

Backwards Compatibility - Am I correct in understanding the 360 has to emulate an Xbox, and does this cause any problems for backwards compatibility? Ok, seen the sticky thread and it has a link to compatible games.

Cost - Basically, how much am I likely to be spending on a 360 and peripherals off the bat, is the Premium worth it over the Core if I'm gonna be upgrading the HDD anyway? What's this Arcade package I hear about?

What else? - Is there anything else I should know or consider?

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To be honest, unless you're going to be downloading a lot of films and Xbox originals, the 20gig HDD is perfect for downloading demos, xbla games, extra content etc. Mines got about 11gig left, and theres a bunch of extra maps, content, videos and a couple of demos on there.

.

XBL costs 40quid a year. Totally worth it.

 

Backwards compatibility is indeed emulated, but there's a list of backwards compatible games, and you can pretty much expect every original Xbox game worth playing to be on it.

 

Premium is teh way to go. Everything you need in there, minus the games. You might need a rechargeable battery kit though, much more convenient than battery changing...

 

Additional info: It's awesome. Go buy.

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Hard Drive - 20GB is fine. Like Bard said if you want to download movies/will download everything on the marketplace then you won't be fine with a 20GB. The 120GB HDD is just the same as the 20GB I think looks wise so it's built only for the 360 as far as I'm aware.

XBL - £40 but you can find it a lot cheaper going down to nearly £20 maybe. Arcade games cost 400, 600 I think, probably not, or 800 points. Then you've got updates for games that can range from 200 points to 1200 points.

Cost - There's another controller if you want, some spare headsets because they are bound to break, a Memory Unit if you want to transfer anything, play and charge kit/other rechargable things which are great. Vision Cam if you want video chat, the HD-DVD drive is down to £39.99 now...the keyboard chat thing, then there's just the games.

What else? - If you buy it you will be happy.

 

My view on things.

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Heh, thanks. I'm considering the 'Elite' though I know nothing about that either, how much extra is it and is it worth it? It'd be an extra shift for me. I'm considering trying to save for this soon, and buying it in the summer, cos right now I've got a bit too much going on. I understand the 360 has DivX support too, how can I get any DivX films I have onto it? Like...can it read any sort of discs, can it hook up to my comp etc. I probably wouldn't use up the 20GB now I think of it, cos I'll use my computers for storage of most stuffs. I don't really need any of the fancy display stuff and cables, as I only have crappy TVs to play it on, and I'm not gonna be shelling out for a nice screen any time soon after shelling out for a 360.

 

One thing I am interested in, the implications of the loss of the format war by HD-DVD/Toshiba upon the 360? Are 360 discs HD-DVD? Are they gonna keep being made? If they use DVD and DVD-DL I guess that's not an issue at all though.. I guess with the HD-DVD being an add on, it's no issue, and I see no need for it if HD-DVD is now redundant. What's an XBL point worth?

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Well, 2100 Points:

 

2100 Point Card = £15-20

 

An XBL Arcade game costs 800 points.

DLC for games can cost anywhere between 100-800 points.

Gamerpics, 50-200

Themes, 50-200

 

XBOX Originals, 1100 points I think?

 

 

Oh, something you need to know: Add Dysonism to your friends list when you finally get one :D

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1000 Microsoft Points are £8.50, so I guess a single point is worth £0.0085. Most DLC or Arcade games will cost between 400-1200 points, though.

 

Unless you really want a black console, Premium is the way to go. It has everything you need bar a Play & Charge Kit — a battery pack for the controller, basically — which isn't essential but well worth the £12-15 as it's more convenient than using batteries.

 

As far as I know the DivX playback is fairly comprehensive, and you can easily stream from a Windows PC, or indeed anything else if you're determined to do so. The 20GB HDD will be fine.

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HDD... well the elite comes with a 120GB HDD, and in 5 months I've used about 15GB.

 

xbox originals are 1200 I believe. And not all XBL Arcade games cost 800, some are 500 (Like Sonic)

 

Streaming DivX to your 360 is awesome. I love it. All I do is go to videos on my 360, click on my PC name and there's all my avi files. Ocassionally the network pisses about and I get 'buffering' and lag, but that only happes 1/10 times.

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The best thing about the 360 is the pre-existing library, much of which is cheap and freely available, just like your mum. You should be able to quickly build a decent selection for tuppence.

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Heh, thanks. I'm considering the 'Elite' though I know nothing about that either, how much extra is it and is it worth it? It'd be an extra shift for me. I'm considering trying to save for this soon, and buying it in the summer, cos right now I've got a bit too much going on. I understand the 360 has DivX support too, how can I get any DivX films I have onto it? Like...can it read any sort of discs, can it hook up to my comp etc. I probably wouldn't use up the 20GB now I think of it, cos I'll use my computers for storage of most stuffs. I don't really need any of the fancy display stuff and cables, as I only have crappy TVs to play it on, and I'm not gonna be shelling out for a nice screen any time soon after shelling out for a 360.

If you have the 360 connecting online with it's own ethernet into your router, then a windows pc with Vista or (some name I cant remember, a program...) connecting to your router aswell, Vista has this sharing function already in it. All you got to do is set up file sharing on your PC then on your 360 you can access the files on your PC with all those porn videos in DivX.

This is how mine is set up, other people might say otherwise. This is the same for music aswell, no need to copy all of your CDs onto the 360's HDD, you can just stream the music. 'Don't stop me now' whilst chainsawing in Gears is an occasion to remember.

Forgot to mention you can stream stuff off an external HDD aswell I think. I've not done it in a while but I'm sure I did it.

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Sonic is only 500 points?!

 

*buys more microsoft points*

 

Nope. Sonic 2 is only 400 points. As is Streets of Rage 2.

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The best thing about the 360 is the pre-existing library, much of which is cheap and freely available, just like your mum. You should be able to quickly build a decent selection for tuppence.

 

Lol, nice one. I'm considering it because of that too, but also I understand there will be a Fable 2! It's not enough to warrent buying a console, of course. But Fable was my first Xbox game, so much so, I actually bought it 2 weeks before my Xbox! It was DoW in Game for £10 or something silly while I was working there.

 

If you have the 360 connecting online with it's own ethernet into your router, then a windows pc with Vista or (some name I cant remember, a program...) connecting to your router aswell, Vista has this sharing function already in it. All you got to do is set up file sharing on your PC then on your 360 you can access the files on your PC with all those porn videos in DivX.

This is how mine is set up, other people might say otherwise. This is the same for music aswell, no need to copy all of your CDs onto the 360's HDD, you can just stream the music. 'Don't stop me now' whilst chainsawing in Gears is an occasion to remember.

Forgot to mention you can stream stuff off an external HDD aswell I think. I've not done it in a while but I'm sure I did it.

 

Oho, you have me sussed! Anyway, I've got a DivX player that I use already for some films and tv stuff I've acquired and it reads all discs, so it's not that important, but I thought if the 360 could do the same, it'd mean I could leave that with one of the TVs and we'd have another floating around, always handy! The streaming thing sounds pretty cool though, I've got Vista on this laptop so it'd be doable. The whole 360 in router thing though, am I correct in understanding it doesn't come with built in wireless?! Moreover, I'm gonna have to shell out >£50 to get it??

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Might as well hijack this thread as I have some questions too.

 

Basically I've got a rather crappy TV...it aint that bad, but its a standard CRT screen, and only has connections like SCART etc. Will it be sufficient for the 360? (can't afford a HDTV yet...)

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Yes.

But some games will have completely unreadable text... Not to mention things wouldn't look half as good (imo).

 

Play a game like Gears on an SDTV, then play it on a 1080p HDTV. Theres a serious difference.

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The whole 360 in router thing though, am I correct in understanding it doesn't come with built in wireless?! Moreover, I'm gonna have to shell out >£50 to get it??

It doesn't come with wireless inbuilt. The wireless adaptor was £50 or £60 when it came out, now you can get it cheaper down to £30 maybe.

Might as well hijack this thread as I have some questions too.

 

Basically I've got a rather crappy TV...it aint that bad, but its a standard CRT screen, and only has connections like SCART etc. Will it be sufficient for the 360? (can't afford a HDTV yet...)

You get a component cable in the box and one of those adaptors for Scart sockets. You can still play it, but it won't look very nice.

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Yes.

But some games will have completely unreadable text... Not to mention things wouldn't look half as good (imo).

 

Play a game like Gears on an SDTV, then play it on a 1080p HDTV. Theres a serious difference.

 

 

I agree with Jordan, when I got my 360 the scart connection made it look terrible, with some parts hard to see or read. VGA solved that problem.

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Oh dear...>_>, can I not just buy a pretty telly and buy an xbox and be done with it..

 

^.^

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You can get a 32" Samsung on Ebuyer.com for £415, complete steal considering i payed about £100 more than that last summer.

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Text on certain games looks bad on a 14" "portable" TV. It's easily readable on the 28" widescreen CRT we have downstairs

 

The games still look very good on the both of them (apart from the blue tint the big TV has).

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It doesn't come with wireless inbuilt. The wireless adaptor was £50 or £60 when it came out, now you can get it cheaper down to £30 maybe.

 

Where from?

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I agree with Jordan, when I got my 360 the scart connection made it look terrible, with some parts hard to see or read. VGA solved that problem.

 

Damn it! I think I'll just have to bear it for now...this is gonna be my my first next gen console so I'm hoping it will look much better than my PS2 regardless of Hi Definition or not.

 

:smile:

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Damn it! I think I'll just have to bear it for now...this is gonna be my my first next gen console so I'm hoping it will look much better than my PS2 regardless of Hi Definition or not.

 

The difference between PS2 SD Graphics and 360 SD Graphics is much greater than the difference between 360 SD and HD graphics.

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Dont get Dead Rising or PGR3 if you only have a SD TV. I couldnt read any of the text in either games on my crappy old telly.

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