slowride
slowride New Reader
8/8/11 2:03 p.m.

I'm looking to get an xbox 360 to play Forza, LA Noire, Red Dead Redemption, etc. I'm wondering what I should buy. Does the onboard storage help anything? I notice they have models ranging from 4gb to 320gb.

Is it a good idea to buy an used one? Are there other extras I should plan to buy?

donalson
donalson SuperDork
8/8/11 3:40 p.m.

I just got mine a few weeks back... 4gb model... only have 3 games (forza 3, halo 3, and one of the ww2 FPS)... and I already plan to get a bigger HDD

forza3 requires you to use a gig of it if you want to play online... you can install the disc on the HDD to speed up load times if you have room on the HDD... you still have to insert the game disc but I know with how long load times are on forza 3 it may be worth it.

I got mine for $230+ tax came with the the 360 slim and the live starter pack (http://www.amazon.com/Xbox-360-Months-Messenger-Points-Starter/dp/B004CVRAFQ/ref=sr_1_2?s=videogames&ie=UTF8&qid=1312836111&sr=1-2 head phones, keypad, 400 points, and 12 month gold live card)... when I get to buy a new HDD they have aftermarket 250gb on amazon for $50...

also the slim 4gb is flat black so no finger prints... if that means anything to you ;-) lol

i've got mine setup with media player and tversity to stream movies and music from the computer... pretty awesome system:)

on a side note... you can buy used... but from what i've been told/read if you get used at least use gamestop or something like that the red ring made me decide to splurge for the new system

SupraWes
SupraWes Dork
8/8/11 4:19 p.m.

If I were buying now I would definitely go with one of the new slim models. The hard drive can be useful if you play a lot of games that load a lot of content from the disc, any game can be copied to the hard drive. La Noire and Red Dead are those kind of games. You still have to put the disc in to verify you own it but after that stuff loads from the hard drive at a much faster rate.

If head tracking sounds cool to you get a bundle with the Kinnect sensor. There are also lots of dancing and exercise games that make good use of it if you have other family members that might like that.

clutchsmoke
clutchsmoke Reader
8/8/11 4:28 p.m.

Get the newest 360 you can afford. Also the 4gb is not enough. It will get used up fast. Check slickdeals and techbargains for deals that pop up. Usually Fry's, Wal Mart, Target, etc. will have pretty good bundle deals every month or so that get posted on the aforementioned sites.

As far as extras it really depends on how you want to game. I have a set of Turtle Beach wireless surround sound headphones that integrate the xbox live chat into them. Some of the best headphones I've ever sampled and I can clearly hear people. Using the headset that comes with the xbox I had difficulty hearing people a lot of the time and my hearing is average or slightly better than average.

slowride
slowride New Reader
8/8/11 4:52 p.m.

Awesome, thanks guys!

clutchsmoke
clutchsmoke Reader
8/9/11 2:15 a.m.

No problem!

If the 60GB is currently offered I would try and get that. 320GB is major overkill IMO. I picked up a 120GB drive and have only used half or so after ripping about a handful of games onto it.

slowride
slowride New Reader
8/9/11 2:54 p.m.

It'll depend on what I can find, but I'll probably end up with a 4gb slim and an extra hard drive. I'm going to check out those headphones, also.

N Sperlo
N Sperlo Dork
8/9/11 4:30 p.m.

Be sure to jump over to the Forza 3 Gamertags Thread. Most of us... don't always play Forza constantly, so you can check out what we play. I'm always up for multiplayer on anything. (Unless Wifey wants to watch Netflix.)

friedgreencorrado
friedgreencorrado SuperDork
8/9/11 5:29 p.m.

Another vote against the little ones. I bought one for the other room, and now that the roomie with the HD has moved out, I play everything on the little one. Much more glitchy, and gets worse the more you fill it up. Forza won't even run replays on it. I've also gotten John Marston killed by animals several times while doing the knife-hunting challenge. He takes a little too long to start moving when there's multiple animals. I've been trying to swear off frivolous purchases since I got laid off, but I'm so frustrated with this thing that I'm seriously tempted to go get one of the "real" ones while I've still got money.

N Sperlo
N Sperlo Dork
8/9/11 6:51 p.m.

In reply to friedgreencorrado:

I'm not surprised. The first problem the Xbox had was overheating. What happens when you take a big hot running engine and remove.. ohh, I dunno', the radiator? They had to remove a lot of heat sink to cram it into that thing.

donalson
donalson SuperDork
8/9/11 9:16 p.m.

found this...

The CPU/GPU are now seated on one die along with eDRAM. And there is a one large fan instead of two smaller louder fans. So it's cheaper to make, smaller and quieter.
RossD
RossD SuperDork
8/10/11 7:35 a.m.

For the 'jitters' and longer and longer load times, you gotta clean out your hard drive cache. It's a little different on each version of the xbox's OS. So look it up. I think you can still hold the 'A' button while the xbox logo swirls around before the game loads or you can go into the dashboard and either select the harddrive and clear the cache (as an option on the bottom of the screen) or do a button sequence on the game pad to clear it.

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