looking at xbox 360

so i'm thinking about getting a 360. i've seen that prices have just come down and that the older 20gb versions are being priced between the driveless versions and the new 60gb version. can anybody tell me if the only difference is the hard drive size? i'm a little concerned that the 20gb version is an older version that the 60gb version. i'm sure 20gb would be enough for me and if it's not, i could always add an external... right?

or maybe i should go with the driveless version and just slap on an external drive myself. would that give me the same functionality as an internal drive? would i be able to play xbox games on that system and d/l content just like an internal?

also, i don't currently have HD so HDMI cable bundles are not interesting to me (tho of course, i don't want a version that doesn't support HD at all).

 

It's slightly cheaper to buy the arcade version for $199 and then a 120GB hard drive for $149 than it is to buy an elite, but if you don't need the 120GB drive, the 60GB premium system is the best deal. I'm probably getting an elite soon and moving my old 20GB system from the media room to the play room for the kids. We're always fighting over who gets to watch/play what in the media room so another 360 would help a LOT. Plus the elite is black and matches all my other shit better. I've used my old system so much that the original controller is starting to have left analog stick issues.

Not sure what you mean by external drive, anything you add will have to be the official MS Xbox 360 hard drive of whichever size you want to buy. I don't think the 60GB is available separately.

I use my 360 a lot just for streaming music from my mp3 player to the home theater system.

 

Yeah, definitely what he said.

 

Call me stupid but what is the difference in the arcade model and the others. I have a son who is just starting to play and he doesn't use it for anything other than games. Does he need the extra hard drive space for that kind of stuff?? I want him to be able to save his games as in what he has won but that's it.

 

Starting now and more so into the future, downloadable content will be the key to games, whether it's Rock Band or racing games or whatever. Having the hard drive is key for those features.

 

Yeah, it's pretty important. Mine is just the 20 gig, which seems to be plenty, but you do want one with a hard drive. And if you do get him one, be sure to buy him Call of Duty 4. He'll be ready to kill Arabs and Russians in no time.

 

The arcade unit comes with a 256 meg card that should be fine for saving games and profiles.

The HD is handy in getting demos and preview movies though, and it can obviously hold a lot more XBLA games. Also, with the new dashboard coming (in a few days/weeks) you can 'preload' entire games on the HD, which will make them load faster and quieter.

The 20 gig will likely only be big enough for 1-2 games.

You pretty much want a HD, but if you'd rather spend that money towards a game I can't blame you. Last week or the week before, Target put the 20 gig HD on clearance for $20 I think. If you could still find one of those, it would go great with an Arcade system and save you a few bucks over buying a standard system.


edit: A 20 gig hd contains about 13 gigs of useable space, for reference.

 

Get the biggest hard drive xbox you can afford. There are deals for the new pro with a 60gb hd for $250, there's no reason for anyone to buy an arcade or deal with a tiny 20GB hard drive.

I have more than 20GB of stuff on my machine already, Rock Band songs along are 10GB or so, and I just downloaded a single DEMO that was 1.2GB (merc 2).

 

Good point. Rock Band songs do fill up your HD pretty quickly.

You can always delete/redownload stuff you bought, so if you don't mind that annoyance then there's no need for a bigger HD. Demos are the main reason most people need a HD, it's great being able to d/l demos from most games at your leisure.

 

just got a 60gb xbox 360 from costco. i just got sick of having to read the fine print every time i wanted to buy a wii game. rb doesn't support dlc, rb2 does but it looks like ghwt won't be compatible with the rb2 instruments (as opposed to the xbox360 and ps3 versions). it's just fucking annoying.