VIDEO Billie Gates is Not My Lover: The Xbox 360 Discussion

I have a Wii in my living room that's collecting dust. I think that motion-based gameplay has become just too gimmicky for my liking. Flailing my arms around could get really annoying when I'm trying to relax and play a game. I much prefer the feel of a regular controller, which is why I do so much better at Sega Racing on the 360 than Mario Kart on the Wii using the steering wheel.

If the new Zelda game were coming out on the 360, you can bet that I'd get that port over the Wii version.

However, I do think that the controller setup for Super Mario Bros. Wii was done well, which is in part why I'm excited for the upcoming Donkey Kong Country Wii.

 

Does Microsoft offer a payment plan for Zune similar to Netflix? Zune seems to have so much better and newer stuff than Netflix, but it's so expensive by comparison...

 

I can't afford it right now, but if I don't spend any money all month I should be able to. Chances are I will spend money this month, but I might also get money for my birthday and Christmas.

 

The Reach console bundle is a sweet deal, imo. It's a shame my fiancee decided on not getting it for me. I got so pissed that she preordered it and told me she was getting it and then decided not to at the last minute.

Now I'm stuck with my flaky Halo 3 console until I can justify spending $200 on a regular 360 slim (since I doubt I can justify spending $400 on the Reach edition).

 

Wow, the Kinect is great fun. Having a blast and really impressed with how well it works*


*never played a Wii, so this is my first venture into the motion stuff

 

I've heard a lot of great stuff about Kinect.

Also, the Wiimote isn't all that accurate (at least not with the standard sensor bar). My friend ended up buying another sensor bar from Gamestop for $20 and it works surprisingly better than the standard (but it's also bigger).


I hear that Best Buy has a 360 Kinect bundle with a 360 slim console, Kinect, and a game (or two), and maybe two wireless controllers. In addition to that, you also get a $20 Best Buy gift card for purchasing it. The bundle costs about $300 IIRC.

 

I've seen around that it is possible to use the old hard drives on the slim, by popping off the plastic coverings or something similar. Handy for saving $$ by getting the 4Gb and no transfer cable, just fyi

 

So, since my fiancee's about to pop any week/day now, she decided to open presents last night.

She got me a 360-S from Target, the 4GB one since that was all they had left.

I have a bunch of questions concerning it, however, and I hope some of you can help me with them...


I still have my Halo 3 edition 360 (basically a regular 20GB 360) which we're going to use as a DVD/Netflix player in the bedroom. I will also probably need to keep using it for gaming when the living room TV is being occupied (we plan on connecting the 360-S in the living room).

My questions are as follows:

1) Can the 360-S use the regular 360's hard-drive so that I can easily switch between consoles when playing a game? ie. Say I'm in the middle of Assassin's Creed and she wants to come to bed. Can I just remove the regular hard-drive and take it to the living room and put it on the 360-S and flawlessly continue my game?

2) Downloading my profile. When I download my profile onto the 360-S, the only things that are downloaded are my account and achievements and game history? If I had downloaded marketplace games onto my regular 360, can I also download them to my 360-S without paying again for them?

3) The 4GB 360-S does not come with a controller charge pack, just a battery pack. I have a single controller charge pack that came with my older 360 (the one that you connect to the console and the controller while in use so that it charges). All I need is another controller charge pack since I already have the wire. Do they sell the packs separately, or do you have to by the entire kit with connective wire and pack?

4) My 20GB older 360 runs out of space all the damn time. So I expect some problems to arise from a 4GB unit. Is there any way to add memory space to it, or do I need to get a memory card?

5) There are a crap-ton of USB ports on the back of the 360-S. Why?

 

I think you can use external storage devices (USB hard drive or memory stick) to house stuff on.

 

Yeah, I just read up on it. Apparently there's no way to switch between a regular 360 hard drive and a 360-S hard drive (since the latter is internal) without a data transfer cable.

So using a USB flash drive would be the best bet. But it seems that MS recommends that you use the official 360 flash drive to do this, which costs about $30 for an 8GB flash drive, or about $50 for a 16GB drive.

Jesus Christ.

Anyone know of any other flash drives that work decently for transferring saved game data between consoles?

 

I used the Microsoft transfer cable and it worked like a charm. It was only like $20 and everything got transfered over perfectly. The only flaw was that my "in-progess" achievements for some games got reset. Specifically, Zombie Genocidist from Left 4 Dead. The one where you have to kill 30,000something zombies accross multiple playthroughs? Yeah, I had close to 20k done but when I transfered hard drives it rest. I don't think I'll ever get it now.

 

That sucks.

The thing is, though, that I don't want to do a complete data transfer. I want to be able to use both my 360s. Say I'm playing Assassin's Creed Brotherhood in the living room on the 360-S and my fiancee decides she wants to watch something on the DVR that's out there. I want to be able to continue my game on the older 360 that's in the bedroom.

I would be able to do this by moving the saved game file to a flash drive, yeah?


Also, since the console she got me didn't come with a wireless controller charge kit, I went out and bought a cheap one from Gamestop. It's a Nyko Charge and Play battery and cable, similar to the MS one, but for $14 instead of $20.

I brought it home and was about to test it out but decided to check out some reviews for it. Turns out that it has an average rating of 2/5 stars on Amazon and similar reviews/ratings on various other sites. Apparently it doesn't hold a charge for most people and I'd be better off paying the extra cash for a MS charge and play kit.

Luckily I didn't open this, so I'll just exchange it for an MS one.

 

Ah I see. Yeah that makes sense and should work. I don't have much experience transferring saves with a flash drive though.

 

So I just had a better idea. Can't I just use a 360 memory card to hop from one console to another?

EDIT:

Okay, I just read that the 360-S doesn't have any ports for the older 360 memory cards.

Any thoughts on the data transfer cable? Would I be able to move saved game data between consoles painlessly with that?

 

I am fairly certain that any usb stick may be used to transfer profile and other data between concoles (probably best just to leave the important stuff on the usb to avoid transfer reptitions) I use a basic Lexar one no problem. You can use up to 16gb on one usb drive. You just need to format it to accept the 360 data (done in memory tab on hub with usb inserted, and you can custom set how much memory to alot to 360 storage on the memory stick)

 

The data transfer cable wipes the hard drive that you are transferring from. It's not meant to make copies of hard drives but to just transfer the data.

 

And not all games will let you transfer their saves. I've never been able to transfer my Fable II saves across Xboxes.

 

Ugh. This is starting to sound like a huge pain.

I can't even painlessly switch my gamertag between consoles without having to re-download it over and over again.

Maybe having two active 360s wasn't as great a thing as I had thought.

 

It might be simpler to leave a set of cables in each room plugged into each TV and just move the Xbox around as needed.

 

No kidding.

I thought getting a 360-S would make life so much simpler with its wifi capability.

Today I just tried to play AC:BH over Live on the 360-S in the living room but the game didn't give me the option for multiplayer! WTH!

Hmm...I just noticed that it's not giving me the option on my old 360 either. Is multiplayer down or something??

 

Called Xbox customer support yesterday. They told me that all my saved game files should automatically download to any console that I download my gamertag to.

When I told them that they were wrong and that this doesn't work, the lady said that something was wrong with my profile then, so she set up a three way call with me, her, and her supervisor. While I was waiting for that, she told me that a 360 memory card would fix my issue. I told her that the Internet says that the old 360 memory cards won't fit in a 360-S, to which she said, "Oh...right!"



Finally the supervisor comes on the line and tries to understand the situation. At first, she doesn't seem to get why I would want to use two 360's interchangeably. When I explain it to her (one in the living room, one in the bedroom, with the one in the bedroom having all the saved game files), she said that I can't do anything unless I'm downloading the games off Xbox Live.

So then I mention the data transfer cable and how that can transfer all the files directly, but how I'm worried that it won't really help me.

Then she's like, "Oh! Right, data transfer...Just use a flash drive. Anything bigger than 4GB."

So. Painful.

 

On another topic, does anyone know where our Xbox Live payment money goes to? I've been getting into that age old debate at work about PSN vs Xbox Live, and I can't really justify the expense of Xbox Live, especially when Wii and PS3 get Netflix for free so long as you have a Netflix account.

 

I'd like to know myself, you can't unsubscribe from Xbox Live Gold without picking up the phone as far as I'm aware. Why can't it just be an option within your profile / account settings?

 

So, I've been Googling this subject and reading a lot of blogs and message board threads about it. For the most part, despite a lot of fanboy-ism, there seems to be a lot of frustration from people about MS charging so much for Live.

I've read from people who use both XBL and PSN that XBL offers a more user friendly interface but is also more laggy than PSN since XBL uses a peer to peer system rather than dedicated servers for each game (which is apparently the case for PSN). That said, PSN can more easily handle more gamers per game than XBL.

In my experience, I've only noticed XBL lag only a couple times in the 3-4 years that I've had it, though.

Anyway, one blog suggests that MS built Live from the ground up so that game publishers/developers of any size can easily attach a multiplayer component to their games free of cost since XBL subscribers are paying to maintain the system. PSN apparently requires game developers to create their own servers and maintain those servers themselves, which means only the bigger company games can afford to make an online component for it (whereas XBL is more friendly to small developers and small games on their Xbox Live Arcade). This is apparently why PSN cannot offer game invites or chat across different games, because there is no single system in place.


However, is a better user interface and superior friends list/chat options a good enough reason to pay $60 a year for? I dunno. If PSN does a similar service (if a bit more clumsily) and is entirely free, it would seem like a no brainer to me that PSN might be better.

After all that reading, I still don't get how MS can justify a $60/year price tag on XBL when the competition is free. They can't even claim that exclusivity to Netflix anymore, as both PS3 and Wii offer that service for free now (as long as you maintain a Netflix account--which XBL subscribers still need to pay for in addition to the XBL fees).

 

People love to complain about it, but it's still selling. And $5 a month shouldn't be a big deal to people who pay $60 for a single piece of software. I don't see the big deal. If I had a broadband connection at home I'd pay for it in a heartbeat, regardless of inferior services being free.