xmiyux

Well it is until you circle around behind goLucky sniping on the rock on Relic and beat him down. Then a few minutes later you get a video message from him.... yeah i'd be afraid of those from friends even

dick_grayson

at least it'll have bejeweled 2 on there

Adam Tyner

I'd bet the majority of those are at least in-engine.

Michael Corvin

That still doesn't mean that I can't give a real life teabag to one of my friends after a great kill in Halo via the camera. Talk about one sure way to get kicked off someone's friends list in no time flat.

flashburn

Not to mention that not too many of those were even launch titles. The console being 2 months away isn't relevant if the game is still a year away.

tenaciousdave

Actually, having the hard drive removable is awesome and should have no effect on this situation. A removable hard drive means you can take it over to a friends like a memory card, you can upgrade to a larger size, and replace it if it breaks.

If everyone had one, there would be no reason for it to not be plugged into the unit.

flashburn

That simply doesn't matter though. Regardless if everyone had one, it is still removable, and Microsoft wouldn't change their position that developers would need to program around the hard drive possibly not being there.

DARTH GAMER

OK, now I'm really upset. Finding out the launch date of the 360 was great. But then realizing that it is the same day your wife is due with your second child is just wrong. Sorry honey, I wish I could be there.

tenaciousdave

I fail to understand that logic. The controller is removable, where's the programming for no controllers?

raven56706

walmart has the pro bundle up again... didnt like the deal so i ordered with gamestop.... the silver bundle

Josh H

Not at all. That would be like them having developers programing around the hard drive on the current x-box because it might die.

If the HD is included in every console, then developers would have no reason not to require it for their games. Being removable would have no effect on that.

flashburn

Being removable would have EVERY effect on that. Microsoft has said since the beginning of the 360 discussion that the machine would still be fuctional without the hard drive attached.

Your comparison between the 360 and the original Xbox's hard drive is flawed. If the original xbox hard drive died, that machine would not be considered to be working properly, whereas if the Xbox 360's hard drive wasn't connected/working that could be considered normal.


But, there is programming against removing or even no controllers attached in most games.

Josh H

But the point remains that developers could have made full use of the HD if all 360's had it and simply required it to be attached to play. Most people will never detach their HD anyway, unless it breaks. And a few people will take them to friends houses.

With some of the 360's not having HDs, developers now will be reluctant to make a game require the HD as some people wouldn't be able to play it unless they through down $100 on an HD. So it's less likely to be used to speed up load times by caching levels, or for gameplay functions like in Blinx.

jeffdsmith

Congrats.

Michael Ballack

Oh for the old days when you could find husbands in the waiting room playing atari while smoking a cigar. Damn that man who started the trend of fathers going into the delivery room!!!

Michael Corvin

My wife is a labor & delivery nurse so she sees it all. She told me one night this guy brought in his PS2 to the delivery room and hooked it up to the tv hanging from the ceiling. Wires everywhere. Stacks of games, extra controllers, the whole deal. Had zero interest in the wife/gf or the baby.

Legolas

I actually tried to get the Walmart pro bundle, but when it wouldn't let me I just did the Gamestop silver bundle. Looking at the Walmart one again, I'm glad I didn't.

tenaciousdave

The entire reason the games are programmed to function without a hard drive is because not all systems have one. There's no other reason and it's removability has nothing to do with it.

But I digress, I don't think we're going to see eye to eye on this one.

Gallant Pig

No hard drive? No biggie. Not sure why this is an issue. The same people who are complaining it doesn't have one also complained about the last one having one because it was able to fail and you couldn't transfer saves out of it.

Much ado about nothing. Load times will be fast because it's a faster DVD drive.

tylatz

I am supposed to shell out $100 for 20 gigs because they made it quiet? I don't understand this part at all. If the hard drive was loud they could have made a better case for it. I think I might have missed a bit of information somewhere, because they can't expect someone to pay $5 a gig because of the special case and they supposedly made it quieter. It has to be SATA2, NCQ, RAID 1,0, or something!

Besides that, this strikes me as the same X-box with more power. Same extra stuff you have to buy and all. Don't get me wrong, I'm going to end up with one next spring when I get back to the states (war = money ), but I don't see anything really new.

Did anyone else notice that it looks like they may pit Halo 3 vs Sony and Nintendo? I hope they do put something brand new into that since its position as the top FPS is mostly due to the controller design. I don't know what y'all usually play, but PC gamers understand what I mean in this respect.

Michael Corvin

It is a notebook size SATA drive. That and it has its own enclosure justifies the cost, I believe.

Chris_D

Nice!

tylatz

I don't know your source, but if that's right then I think this is what it will be.

That's running just a hair under $3 a gig. So, a 20 gig hdd should be $60-70. I'm giving it a $10 leeway since it is a smaller capacity and will cost more even if MS is the one that negotiated the price. So that makes the casing $30. What is making this thing so expensive is the compact size.

Err... what is your source anyway?

I still believe that $100 for a 20 gig hdd is far too much and $5 a gig outlandish. Then again I do have a knack for picking up larger storage devices. I would suggest that they tried a different method that allowed people to buy their own HDD and insert it, but that will never happen due to piracy difficulties and consumers lacking proper knowledge of computer hardware.

sniper308

That and they'll be using some of that 512 MB of memory for caching, I'm sure

Michael Corvin

You assume they are selling at cost, which would be wrong. Anyway, the only thing I have seen on it was from a user here. post