Xbox 360 The all inclusive XBOX 360 Purchasing FAQ

[bloodcar]

What comes in the box

Elite: Black console, wireless controller, and headset. Console has a HDMI 1.2 port. 120GB HDD. Component cable. $479USD

Premium: White console, wireless controller, and headset. 20GB HDD. Component cable. $399USD / £249.99

Core: White console and wired controller. No HDD or Memory card. Composite cable. $299USD / £149.99

Peripherals

VGA Cable: Coming from many members of bit-tech, you should just go ahead and pony up the extra dollars/pounds and pick up the official Microsoft branded cable. Tearing, bleeding, and blurring of the picture seems to be a common complaint about third party cables. It comes with a gender changer so you need not worry about having a VGA socket on your monitor. If you only have an SDTV this is a great buy as you can hook your 360 up to your monitor for HD gaming. This is also the only connection that allows the 360 to upscale DVDs.

HD-DVD drive: The HD-DVD drive uses a USB cable to connect to the 360 allowing you to view HD-DVD movies. It only supports watching movies, however, so don’t expect to see games coming in on the HD-DVD format unless Microsoft releases another SKU down the road with a HD-DVD player built in. It also comes with a universal remote. $199USD $129USD.
Wireless headset: At $59.99USD, this is a purchase for those who have grabbing kids that want to talk to everyone you play or just can’t stand having a wire coming from the bottom of your controller. Sound quality is on par with the wired version. There is an issue if you have four headsets and four pads, but as long as you sync the headsets up before switching the fourth pad on, you’re fine.


Quick charge kit: AT $29.99USD this is a must have unless you have a good set of rechargeable AA batteries and a recharging station. You might want to go ahead and pick up an extra battery for $11.99USD as well so you can always have at least one on charge. I have three batteries (I only remember buying two, one in this kit and one in the play and charge kit) with two controllers so I always try and keep at least two in the charger when the 360 isn't in use.

Wireless adapter: For $99.99USD, avoid it. You can buy a cheaper USB wireless adapter for far less money that will do the exact same thing.

Universal remote: I personally own this one and for $19.99USD, it was a good purchase. If you use your 360 to watch movies (my DVD player broke and since I owned a 360 it was a moot point to buy another) then this is also a must have unless you really enjoy turning on your controller every 30 minutes to pause or rewind or whatever to the film that you're watching.

Play and charge kit: At $19.99USD this kit is for those of you who don’t mind being tied to your console if your battery goes dead or starts dying (the ring of light on your controller will alert you when the battery gets low.) The kit comes with a rechargeable battery pack and a charging cable that plugs into the top of the controller. Any USB port can be used to charge the battery pack up.

Wireless racing wheel: The racing wheel has great feedback and includes a copy of Project Gotham Racing 3 in the packaging. It’s not completely wireless, however, as there is a wire needed to connect the pedals to the steering wheel and you’ll need to plug it into a wall outlet for force feedback to work. For those die-hard racing fans out there, it’s worth the $149.99 cost.

USB Keyboard: There isn’t an official keyboard out for the 360 (yet!) but you can plug in any USB keyboard to make text entry that much easier. For now though, you can’t use a keyboard for any type of controls in games though.

Games

Condemned: I simply cannot recommend this game enough. There is very small replay value at first but it's fun to play again six months or so down the road. This is one of those games that you play alone and in the dark. For those of you out there who have yet to try it yet, go download the demo off of the marketplace.

Gears of War: This game is a blast in both single player and multiplayer modes. The graphics are superb and the execution is spot on. The first time you shoot someone in the head with a shotgun or you chainsaw someone, you'll agree with me if you don't already.

Guitar Hero II: This game has literally rocked my world for the past week. If you haven't played the PS2 iterations before, go check this one out! It has a fairly difficult learning curve (once you get used to one difficulty level, the next one makes you go "awwww shoot") and will make your hand and or shoulder hurt for a day or two. I actually didn't play at all yesterday just to give my left hand a break from the pain of getting used to holding the controller.

I have more but that's all that's popping straight to the front of my head right now. I'll add others when I get home and can look at my collection.

XBLA Games

Before you buy any XBLA game, I'd advise to try out the demo. Even if it's a retro game that you loved back in the golden days of your gaming memory, you just might not like it today. My own example is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles the arcade game. I sunk many, many, many quarters into this game as a child but I absolutely can't stand it today.

Geometry Wars: If you only buy one XBLA game, this is the game to buy. The graphics are simple but really nice at the same time and it's a blast to play. I personally like to put on some techno music and play for about an hour or so.

Outpost Kaloki X: This game is fun but really hard at the same time. At least go download the demo for this one.

This is everything I can think of off the top of my head. Again, I'll ask if anyone has any recommendations to add for games or hardware or if I might have left anything out to please just let me know and I'll add/correct them.

Contributors: Veles, mikeuk2004, Blademrk, mushky

[Veles]

I recommend the play and charge kit, although it's not as good a solution as having the quick charge kit and a bunch of batteries, it's a lot cheaper, seeing as spare batteries come in around £10 a pop, to have a quick charge kit and enough batteries for 2 for each controller can be expensive. I find the 30 hours-ish play time you get from a battery doesn't really warrant the expense of a quick charge kit. If you really don't want to be attached by wires, it only takes about 10 minutes to get a decent charge on there that will probably last through your gaming session, and once your done you can finish charging it up.

If you plug in the play and charge kit and turn off the 360, it will go into a low power mode to charge up the batteries, once thats done, the console will automatically turn off.

Retail games:

Tomb Raider and Condemed are worth looking into since they are both very cheap and pretty good games.

I highly recommend Crackdown, Gears of War, Viva Pinata, Saints Row, Dead Rising and LEGO Star Wars II.

Battlestations: Midway is also a damn good game if you like your action games with a lot of strategy. It's a WWII naval combat, USA vs. IJE, action/strategy game. You have several types of ships and planes at your disposal, all of them you can either control directly, or give orders to. Theres nothing like sneaking up on a Battleship in a sub during multiplayer and unleashing a salvo of torpedoes at it.

If you like your JRPGs, Enchanted Arms is pretty good.

XBLA games:

Uno: Very fun game, great online
Texas Hold'em: Pretty expensive but a fun game
Castlevania: SOTN: It's SOTN! Do you need any more reasons?
Geometry wars is great fun
Roboblitz: Great fun platformer using the new Unreal engine, looks fantastic

[mikeuk2004]

Core is £149.99 and premo is £249.99. Another thing its worth to mention the Premo has a Component cable for HD and the core has a composite cable for SD.

You may also want to point out the fact that the HD-DVD player comes with the Universal Remote. So if someone buying the HD-DVD does not also buy the remote at the same time, then get home and realise they now have 2 Also USA get a free copy of King Kong on HD-DVD and the UK get no free HD-DVD.

You should add the Pioneer HTPGS1 Xbox 360 Surround Sound System

http://www.play.com/Electronics/Elec...earchsource=0#

I bought it in January in Play's sale at £149.99 and the best part was if you bought it before 31st Jan and sent your receipt to Pioneer they gave you Need For Speed Most Wanted and Burnout Revenge for free. Cant say no to 2 free games.

The system gives great sound and the remote is great if you have not already bought the DVD remote for your 360. It has all the buttons and even the Windows Media Centre Button. Comes with Radio built in 2 x Optical inputs and 1 Coaxial and 1 analogue. I love it and its white and maches the 360 as its sponsored by Microsoft.

Also the Microsoft Wireless wheel is a must buy for driving game fans. My wife has bought me it for my birthday next week and Ive had a few sneak plays while she was out and the build quality is awesome. Great feedback and makes racing games fun, just cant wait forza 2.

I also recommend the Quick Charge Kit. I have it a nd 2 batteries for my 2 joypads but will be getting more batteries so I have 2 for each joypad.

The Microsoft VGA cable is a great buy if you want HD but only have a standard def TV. Any perfectly good Monitor will give you HD with this cable. Also dont need to worry about not having a VGA socket on your monitor as the MS cable comes with a gender changer so it can plug right into the plug of the fitted cable on your monitor.

Games - Id recommend GEARS, GRAW, R6 VEGAS, PG3, Lost Planet, Saints Row and PES.

Dont forget about the upcoming QWERTY keyboard attachment coming out for the joypad.

[Blademrk]

Wireless headset: Again, I don't own this so this is only going from memory from what I've read. The wireless headset uses up one of the controller "slots" as it syncs up with the 360 itself. At $59.99USD, I think the only people who really want one are the people who can't stand having a wire going from the controller to the normal headset.

I've got one and think it was well worth the purchase (the kids keep pulling the wired one out of the pad as they try and grab the headset 'cos "I wanna talk" - those who played Gears with us know what I'm on about ).

They don't use up any additional wireless slots, there is an issue if you have 4 headsets and 4 pads - but as long as you sync the headsets up before switching the 4th pad on your fine.

[Blademrk]

Retail Games:

Gears of War - Don't miss this one, fantastic Shooter.

Call of Duty 2 - Good Single Player, damn near impossible achievements (achievements for completing each level on Hardest difficulty where the enemy has super vision and can pick you off from a hundred yards when just the top of your head is visible from any cover you may be in )

Perfect Dark Zero - not brilliant (in fact many hate it) but I found it quite playable. Multi player is better than single player.

King Kong - easy achievements if you can be bothered to complete the game.

Amped 3 - quite a fun snowboarder game. No online multi player and only a few mini games which actually involve 2 players. Can be bought fairly cheap

Burnout Revenge - really good racer with superb online multi-player. well worth tracking down.

Kameo - one of the first games available on the 360 and one that's still worth playing. a good platformer with an okay online co-op. Achievements are fairly easy with 700 points being quite easy to get. The last 300 are a bit of a nightmare though. Is now available on budget too.

Dead or Alive 4 - a semi decent beat-em-up, although the final boss is as cheap as they come.

Oblivion - awesome RPG with the majority of the achievement points being obtainable (I'm left with the Thieves guild quest (110 AP) after spending little over 200 hours in game. I'm still debating whether to complete the TG quests as I consider the theft mechanism in the game to be quite broken (steal something and a guard that wasn't there before will materialize and arrest you. on the odd chance he doesn't and you make it to the next town, another guard will arrest you on entry. For an integral part of the game, tis annoying to say the least)

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TMNT) - extremely easy, can get all AP in one go over a weekend. some very annoying sections and you tend to wall run instead of jump if you're to close to a wall in some sections. Worth a rent if you want to boost your gamerscore or your a turtles fan, otherwise steer clear.

Ninety Nine Nights (N3) - Pure button masher. can be great fun and really addictive, but can also be extremely repetitive if you keep dying in certain spots (or if your trying to level up to get the "all characters to level 9" achievement).

Ghost Recon (GRAW) - Online is supposed to be pretty good (I don't know yet as I can't seem to connect to a game)

PGR3 - Good racer, and also comes free if you get the FF steering wheel.

Table Tennis - Cheap, extremely good fun online

Lego Star Wars 2 - worth getting a copy, although beware, there is a bug on the Return of the Jedi Super Story Mode where it will Hard Lock your console requiring you to reset on either the section where you cross the river in Ewok Village or in the section where you escape from the Death Star 2 after blowing the core. So far I haven't been able to cross the river without the 360 locking up.

Tomb Raider - really good (£15 in Tesco) I haven't enjoyed a Tomb Raider game as much since the first one.

Dynasty Warriors Empires - Same as N3 only with a RISC element to it. again quite enjoyable if you like button mashers.

Condemned - One of the first games I bought, and I've only recently got around to playing it. It feels slow, but that's intentional in order to build up the tension and atmosphere. worth playing.

Enchanted Arms - JRPG, I'm enjoying this at the moment (although the extremely camp guy in your party in the beginning is very annoying. Reminds me of 'Big Gay Al' in South Park)

Battlefield 2 - I couldn't get into this at all.

I can add my opinion on the Arcade Games I've got as well if anyone wants them.

[Veles]

Originally Posted by Blademrk

Enchanted Arms - JRPG, I'm enjoying this at the moment (although the extremely camp guy in your party in the beginning is very annoying. Reminds me of 'Big Gay Al' in South Park)

Haha that guy was halarious, I think that blond bloke who saves your ass sometimes is the camp guy

Should probably talk about the HDD since some people can get confused about it.

For the 20GB version, you first have the problem that 20GB doesn't actually equal 20GiB. The the system takes around 6gig I think for emulation software, game cache, etc. So you only end up with around 14GiB left over.

Not sure how it works out for the 120GB drive.

If you want to play original xbox games you need the HDD, and only certain games work (found here). Even if it's listed as backwards compatible it may not work perfectly since it is software emulated.

Oh yeah, for text input, you can actually plug in a USB keyboard no hassle and it will work with the text input stuff on the "blades", or so I've heard.

[Blademrk]

yeah, a USB keyboard is very handy for messenging and any game which requires text input (worked in Oblivion for naming spells and any items you enchant)

[sirkillalot617]

The Microsoft VGA cable is a great buy if you want HD but only have a standard def TV. Any perfectly good Monitor will give you HD with this cable. Also dont need to worry about not having a VGA socket on your monitor as the MS cable comes with a gender changer so it can plug right into the plug of the fitted cable on your monitor.

Right Iv ordered a 360 and a 22inch hd monitor do I need this cable to connect them together.

[DougEdey]

If the monitor doesn't have component, phono or DVI+HDCP inputs.

[mushky]

VGA is also the only connection that will allow the 360 to upscale DVDs.

[Jamie]

Tomb Raider was good, lots of easy points but once you've completed all the achievements you may as well sell the game on.

[bloodcar]

Thanks for all of your input guys. I'll edit the first post tomorrow to include all the additional information/opinions when I"m not busy at work.

Veles, the main reason I don't care for the play and charge kit is because I normally sit 15'+ away from my tv so it just makes it a PITA. I'll put your side up there though too.

[sirkillalot617]

If the monitor doesn't have component, phono or DVI+HDCP inputs.

thanks my monitor seems to have those.

[DougEdey]

The DVI+HDCP is only when MS bring out the HDMI cable by the way

[wafflesomd]

What's wrong with buying a core

It's nice if all you want to do is game, and besides, I mounted my hdd.

[Veles]

Originally Posted by bloodcar

Thanks for all of your input guys. I'll edit the first post tomorrow to include all the additional information/opinions when I"m not busy at work.

Veles, the main reason I don't care for the play and charge kit is because I normally sit 15'+ away from my tv so it just makes it a PITA. I'll put your side up there though too.

Yeah it does depend where you game from obviously, since my I play my 360 on my monitor, the cable from a play and charge kit is only an inconvenience if it snags so it's fine for me.

Anyone know the link to that program that allows you to see whos online doing what from your PC with little pop-ups like msn has? That would be a nice thing to add to the list.

Originally Posted by wafflesomd

What's wrong with buying a core

It's nice if all you want to do is game, and besides, I mounted my hdd.

Nothing wrong with the core TBH, it still plays games, if you don't really take advantage of live's download services then it's a bit pointless, it depends on the gamer. For most people, the premium is the better choice, but for some people, they may be able to get along fine with the core console. Also remember that there will be a lot of cheap 20GB HDD's on eBay soon, since many people will be wanting to get the new 120GB HDD.

[Blademrk]

Originally Posted by Veles

Anyone know the link to that program that allows you to see whos online doing what from your PC with little pop-ups like msn has? That would be a nice thing to add to the list.

XBList v.3 ?

nb: not 100% compatible with Vista x64

[Veles]

Ah yeah thats the one

[Sp!]

http://www.mygamercard.net/
and
http://www.360voice.com/

Are cool sites if you want to keep track of your / friends Gamerscore stats and generally boast about your xbox live e-wang

[mikeuk2004]

Just incase anyone is buying a 360. Gamestation is selling the 360 premo with 5 games for £284.99, this includes Gears of War, Crackdown, Sonic, Pro Evo, and Testdrive.

As the premium console can be bought for £249.99 now that means your getting 5 games for £34.99. Bargin

The 360 is droping in price and the deals are getting better each week. Good time to buy.