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Second 250GB Xbox 360 Announced
Microsoft will release a 250GB Xbox 360 bundled with Forza Motorsport 3 on October 23.
The console will ship with a 250GB hard drive, two wireless controllers, a headset and a standard edition of 360 exclusive racer Forza 3 for an estimated retail price of £249.99.
The announcement follows the unveiling of a 250GB Modern Warfare 2 Xbox 360 earlier this week.
Microsoft has said that it won’t be selling a 250GB hard drive individually.
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Copyright 2006 - 2009 Future Publishing Limited, Beauford Court 30 Monmouth Street Bath, UK BA1 2BW
England and Wales company registration number 2008885
I view this as a reluctant admission from MS that their original vision of the HD as the xbox cash cow, is well and truly off the rails. The 360 has zero chance of capturing the digital entertainment market with a HD pricing policy that has 1gig coming with a £1 price tag. Look out for a painful meeting at MS towers over the coming 12 months, when pride is swallowed and the decision is made to release HD storage for the 360 at street price.
Given this move, I find it all the more bizarre that they chose to discontinue the 60 gig and press on with the Arcade. The move towards digital distribution, DLC and game installs makes it look all the more pointless by the day.
Except that keeping the Arcade allows them to maintain the illusion of offering the console at a low price, the unspoken, obvious-to-most-of-us punch line being that once you add a HDD, Wi-Fi, a Live subscription, controller batteries/chargers, et. al. the price is anything but low.
I am genuinely curious to hear anecdotally whether anyone here knows anyone who regularly games with only the base, out-of-the-box Arcade configuration, i.e., no HDD and no Live, using only the 256MB of internal memory. Anyone?
The type of people who would buy an Arcade 360 and keeps it harddrive free aren't going to post here. Or, likely, any other big game-site. They might pick up a memory card, I should point out, so there is some chance for them to have add-on storage (primarily for save files).
Worth noting - wifi is only an addition charge if you want it. I don't, so it doesn't bother me. If you've got rechargable batteries (like for a camera) or use the wired controllers, knock that off the list. The point of the Arcade SKU is so you can get gaming now, then as you want to (or more likely, can afford it) get up to where you want to be. I've got an Arcade, was given a 20g harddrive, and plan to buy a 120g sooner or later. I'll have spent less on my system than I would've buying an Elite straight out.
I did hate the Arcade SKU for the longest time, and I still believe that the lack of a standardized harddrive is what will hurt the 360 the most for developers, but I do have a little appreciation for the scheme nowadays.
I refuse to believe that the hard drives cost them all that much. The Arcade currently costs £30 less than the 60gig did before it was discontinued. This doesn't seem to be a very good value proposition.
Also, you were given a hard drive, to buy one would have cost you £60. An Arcade with a hard drive will cost you more than an Elite straight out. And get you half the storage space. A memory card will set you back £35, getting you 768mb total storage. For another £15 you can get an Elite.
The only way that the Arcade is worthwhile is if you are buying it to play Pro Evo alone.
I wonder if this will make the default firmware capable of using standard 205gb hard drives, if you modified you're existing say 20gb hard drive and put in a 2.5" drive above 120gb it wouldn't recognise any higher than 120gb unless you had modified firmware on your 360. If this is the case that's a win for all as it's pretty easy to chuck a new hard drive in.