Xbox 360 - What You Get For Your Money 108
1up.com has a news post throwing together information from various sources, and revealing some release details about the Xbox 360. Scans of marketing flyers finally make clear the differences in the two skus. From the article: "There's ... a handy chart comparing the Core system to the standard system. The accessories are perhaps the most interesting, with specs and suggested retail prices listed. The wired controller is compatible with Windows XP, and the hard drive comes with some pre-loaded data, including an HD puzzle game. Of course, everything in the brochure is subject to change without notice, so check back for more confirmation as we get closer to the launch date." More commentary is available from Chris Morris's always excellent Game Over column. A transcript of the J. Allard chat is available at Major-Nelson.com.
Re:the hard drive (Score:2, Insightful)
I mean, that's only $5/gb compared to those expensive deals you get on hard drives today that are about 44cents/gb!
Re:I wonder.... (Score:3, Insightful)
I'll wait (Score:3, Insightful)
I'll probably pick up a Xbox or Playstation 2 this year. Hopefully the second hand market will get flooded with consoles from avid gamers trying to get the latest stuff.
"Backwards Compatibility"? Yeah, right. (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, that's right -- "Backwards Compatibility" is only for NEW purchases of Xbox games so they'll play on the X360 , not for Xbox owners who are upgrading their systems and want to continue raising havoc in [insert favorite havoc-raising game title here].
Where does that leave the PS3? Well, it's already been covered [gamedaily.com] that the PS3 is moving away from the traditional PS1/PS2 memory cards in favor of supporting many other memory card formats... but it is certainly possible for a manufacturer to come out with an adapter that could be used to load/copy data from the old memory card to a PS3-supported card. (maybe a copy "service" would be more cost-beneficial than a one-time-use peripheral. Even so...)
I think most people are missing the real battle... (Score:4, Insightful)
One look at the brochure, and all I can say is HO...LY...CR...AP that stuff is expensive!!! $40 for a memory card?!? $40 for a WIRED controller?!?
$30-40 for an AV cable ?!? I can't think of any console in recent memory that cost THAT much for BASIC accessories, let alone the specialty ones.
And combine this with the news from a few weeks ago that says that 3rd part manufacturs will have to pay up to MS or their hardware won't work with the system, so there goes any chance of cheaper options for cables and such.
Folks, we are getting ripped off here, regardless of which package we buy!
Re:I love the way... (Score:3, Insightful)
I love it - last week we had people saying "why is this news? We all knew about this months ago!" and now we have people saying "why is this news? MS just released this info last week!"
Ok, I guess since all of you guys know the future two to three years in advance, the whole rest of the web may as well just close up shop. You could open up a nice business in fortune-telling if your predictions are so freakin' accurate.
Did you bother reading the brochure? MS said nothing last week, for example, about pricing on memory units, separate hard drives, faceplates, etc. This is the first confirmation we have that the hard drive will be required for backward compatibility. It's the first mention of what cables come with each system (important, because component cables are a $40 accessory, and only the $400 system comes with them). It's the first mention that the $400 system is in fact cosmetically different - it has "premium chrome" accents, whereas the $300 system is just white. (To me, the cheap system looks better, honestly. Painting a piece of plastic with chrome paint doesn't look classy to me, it looks tacky.)
If you knew all these facts last week, why didn't you speak up and tell us all about them?
Some of us also just find these brochures interesting and in some cases amusing, especially for the language they use. I like how, according to MS, having the "best experience" with the Xbox 360 requires the possession of "multiple faceplates." You'll only have a "good experience" otherwise - you've been warned!
Re:I think most people are missing the real battle (Score:1, Insightful)
You mean as opposed to $25 for an 8MB Playstation 2 memory card? That's $3.1 per MB vs the 360's $0.63 per MB (assuming it's 64MB) - for the capacity the 360's memory card is five times cheaper.
http://www.ebgames.com/ebx/product/181973.asp [ebgames.com]
$40 for a WIRED controller?
The ceramic white Playstation 2 controller is $45. Sure, the regular ones are $30, but my point is: there's a wired Playstation 2 controller that you have to pay more than $40 to get (if you can get it) anywhere:
http://froogle.google.com/froogle?scoring=pd&q=ps
$30-40 for an AV cable?
The official Playstation 2 S-Video cable retails for $30 (I paid about $35 when I bought mine from my local game store a few years back). 3rd party ones are cheaper ($7-ish), but they're too cheap to carry a decent signal (I've tried them):
http://froogle.google.com/froogle?q=playstation+2
So the prices are actually pretty similar to the Playstation 2's. Except that the Playstation 2 has been out for years and from the way you're behaving you'd have thought everything would be $2 a pop by now - the official accessories are still expensive (and in my experience, 3rd party brands sometimes have inconsistent quality and are not usually worth it). So the grass isn't really any greener on the PS2 fanboy side of the fence.
Re:I think most people are missing the real battle (Score:3, Insightful)
You're only getting ripped off if you, you know, actually buy one. Nobody's forcing you to do so.