Xbox 360

[MetalJedi]

So does anyone feel like some Gears of Wars co-op?

[Matt_Fury]

I just activated my free month of X-box live to get the bonus mission for Mass Effect.  I probably won't renew it until Christmas (my wife can get me the year of X-box live gold membership as a gift) but I'm willing to play some Gears of War or Halo 3 in the meantime.

Capt Coult is my gamer tag (I could not remember what past e-mail address I registered Matt Fury through msn before to recover it.)

[MetalJedi]

Rumors of Best Buy's exclusive for GOW2 have hit.

http://kotaku.com/5055347/best-buy-getting-gears-2-pre+order-rc-tank

[Matt]

As posted in the Lego Indy thread:

For their 2008 XBox 360 Holiday Bundles, Microsoft has announced that Lego Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures will be a free pack-in game with their $299/60 GB Pro model, as well as their $399/120 GB Elite model.  Also included is the Kung Fu Panda game.

More

Glad I never bought this game!  Hopefully I can find some way to snag a copy on the cheap, if not free.

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Also, as has been mentioned here, the New XBox Experience will be hitting in a little over a month from now, on Wednesday, November 19.  It's gonna look a lot different, but I think the thing I'm most-looking forward to is being able to rip games to the hard drive, which will hopefully mean a quieter system and faster load times.  Guess that means I'll have to upgrade from my 20 GB hard drive, though. . .

[Jesse James]

My 360 died last week.  Goes into the mail tomorrow...

Bummer. 

[jedi_master_sal]

Also, as has been mentioned here, the New XBox Experience will be hitting in a little over a month from now, on Wednesday, November 19.  It's gonna look a lot different, but I think the thing I'm most-looking forward to is being able to rip games to the hard drive, which will hopefully mean a quieter system and faster load times.  Guess that means I'll have to upgrade from my 20 GB hard drive, though. . .

My big problem with upgrading the HD for the XBox, is that barring buying an expensive convertor, you have to get an all new drive and NOT be able to copy your existing info on to it.

I'm not a huge gamer, but dang, I don't want to be forced to upgrade and NOT be able to bring along my information. That would wipe out many months of gamplay. And I'm not one for replaying games other than Halo and a scant few others.

[Ryan]

There really should be a better way to transfer data from one to HDD to another. The nice thing is they are easy to change out, so if you wnated you could go out and buy the 120GB and keep your old HDD and just switch them out as you need them. You can put your profile onto a memory card or flash drive so it can be used with both HDDs. Still not really an ideal situation but it'll do the job.

I've got mixed feelings on the New X-Box Experience. They are adding some pretty cool features like Netflix, the aforementioned ability to rip games to the HDD, and the communities parties (essentially like the ability to party up in Halo). But I'm not sold on the new look or those avatarss. It looks like there tried to combine the look of the Wii and the PS3. The avatars are eeirly similar to the Mii's. I wish they could have incorporated the new features into the classic blade style dashboard.

Has anyone heard what happens to our old dashboard themes? Are they just worthless now or will we be able to us modified versions of them?

[MetalJedi]

My 360 died last week.  Goes into the mail tomorrow...

Bummer. 

Sorry to hear about that, the turn around is pretty quick though.

[Jesse James]

Yeah I mailed it today.  A buddy had this happen to his and said he got his back in a week or two I think.  I've heard you get a free game for the hastle or 2 months of XBL or something?  Nothing's been offered to me yet though.

[Matt_Fury]

Jesse.  I got mine back in about a week and a half and it came with a free month of X-box live.

[Jesse James]

Nice...  That'll go for the kids account or mine.  I've not upped mine since my free month ran out so maybe I'll just put it towards teh kid's account.  I get more jollies playing as them anyway since they unlocked all the cool ****.

[Matt]

There really should be a better way to transfer data from one to HDD to another. The nice thing is they are easy to change out, so if you wnated you could go out and buy the 120GB and keep your old HDD and just switch them out as you need them. You can put your profile onto a memory card or flash drive so it can be used with both HDDs. Still not really an ideal situation but it'll do the job.

My big problem with upgrading the HD for the XBox, is that barring buying an expensive convertor, you have to get an all new drive and NOT be able to copy your existing info on to it.

I'm not a huge gamer, but dang, I don't want to be forced to upgrade and NOT be able to bring along my information. That would wipe out many months of gamplay. And I'm not one for replaying games other than Halo and a scant few others.

Say what now?  Microsoft may do some dumb stuff from time to time, but they wouldn't do anything that dumb.

Quoting from Xbox 360 120GB Hard Drive:

The Xbox 360 120GB Hard Drive includes a data transfer kit to easily migrate all of your saved data from your 20GB HDD to your 120GB HDD.

I'm not a huge gamer, but dang, I don't want to be forced to upgrade

How would they be "forcing" you to upgrade?

Now, the NXE will apparently require 128MB of free space in order to run, but Microsoft is offering a free 512MB Memory Card or a 20GB hard drive for $19.99 to Core owners. 

But nobody will be "forced" to upgrade their 20GB hard drives for a bigger one, if they don't want.  It's entirely optional, for users who want to take advantage of everything the NXE has to offer.

[jedi_master_sal]

Ok, cool. If the new dashboard is only 128MB, then I'm good. I've been hearing rumors of it being either 5 or 10GB. It didn't make sense, but I never heard anything before just now to refute that. Hence my objection to the new dashboard and being forced to upgrade due to it's size.

Hmm, 120GB for $150 plus shipping?

I can get a Terabyte drive for $300 or so if not less. (Been awhile since I checked the price on those). Damn Microsoft for making these non-compatible.

It would be SO much easier to be able to hookup an external drive to the XBox...

As I was typing this out, I was talking with the wife. Looks like I may get the 120GB HD tonight. As well we'll get her an Arcade edition XBOX and once I've transferred info from the old drive to the new one, I'll snap on the old drive to the arcade Box for her. Bam, two 360's for $100 less than having to buy an Elite Edition 360 and NOT being able to migrate the info from HD to HD.

On top of that, we get points towards free fuel with our local grocery chain that sells gift cards for retailer, of which Best Buy is one of them. For every $50 we buy we get 10 cents off per gallon of gas at the grocery chain's gas stations. Too boot, it's DOUBLE fuel perks for us right now. So including tax, we'll spend about $400 at Best Buy. SO that would equate to $1.60 off per gallon of gas by getting the gift cards first, then going to buy the unit and HD.

The good thing about this is it's no extra work for us, since we have to drive past the grocery store on the way to Best Buy. It will only take a few minutes of our time is all, but save us at least $45 towards gas. She's checking now to be certain about the double points. If so a new HD is mine and a new 360 is her's tonight!



Hmm, okay, so now the question needs to be asked, while I know we can play 360 to 360, how bad would the connection be for two 360s on one router? We have DSL.

Should I unplug the connection to the Computer for internet access so we have a better connection? Does any of that make sense? (I'm not as technically savvy on net connections, so I need so help understanding this.) Would be better to know this before tonight, so we don't go purchasing this all, only to find out we won't have a good connection and can't play together on separate consoles/tvs.

-Sal

[Matt_Fury]

I don't think it will matter, unless you're using both 360's and downloading a ****-ton of stuff on the computer at the same time.

A friend of mine last Christmas hooked his and his brother's 360's together through a router so they both could play X-box live and they had no problems that I'm aware of.

[Ryan]

I don't think it will matter, unless you're using both 360's and downloading a ****-ton of stuff on the computer at the same time.

A friend of mine last Christmas hooked his and his brother's 360's together through a router so they both could play X-box live and they had no problems that I'm aware of.

Me? Cause my brother and I do it all the time in the summers and winters and we have no problems.