The 360 Arcade is a complete rip off, ESPECIALLY for gamers

Well that really sucks. I was actually thinking about getting the 4Gb 360S and maybe a month or 2 worth Live lol.

And THAT'S WHY I got an Elite!

I AGREE!!! All M$ cares about is money and they are always hungry for it, screw M$!hkymike

I think I've seen every single of the "stop being so cheap" people post anti PC arguments in several of the price discussion threads.

And now you have to read the fine print about optimization and realize that a 4 Gb flash drive does'nt necessarily function the same way as a harddrive does?

I was under the impression that one of the advantages of consoles was that they just work :?

yea people giving him crap for thinking flash memory would work in place of a HDD are out of line imo. It seems perfectly logical to think a game could run just fine on a 4gb system... i would have thought the same thing.

i agree with the tc and what everyone said. the arcade is a ripoff, microsoft likes to rip you off, if youre a gamer stay away from the 360. the ps3 is the best because its not a ripoff i bought mine dayone

i agree with the tc and what everyone said. the arcade is a ripoff, microsoft likes to rip you off, if youre a gamer stay away from the 360. the ps3 is the best because its not a ripoff i bought mine dayone

_SWAG_

That's very weird, and I hadn't heard that before. It seems something like that would be discussed more often, especially in a place such as SW where highlighting a systems faults is the order of the day. I imagine there may be something you can do about this, I'd contact MSs customer service and see if there is a solution if I were you, or return the system saying it's defective.

i agree with the tc and what everyone said. the arcade is a ripoff, microsoft likes to rip you off, if youre a gamer stay away from the 360. the ps3 is the best because its not a ripoff i bought mine dayone

_SWAG_

I have more than 4gig's worth of trailers on my HDD.

Installing Alan Wake (or Mass Effect I forgot) took like 12 gigs.

I too ran into this EXACT problem. I was trying to play ODST coop on my old style arcade and, what do you know, I cannot since I don't have a harddrive. Same problems with forge, same problems with EVERYTHING. Thankfully it seems only bungie has incorporated this horrendous HDD REQUIRED for certain game features. I had no troubles playing horde mode on Gears2.

This is news to me, which I doubt as the box does not say Hard Drive Required, in which sense you would have good grounds to sue for not including all of the requirements on the box. Or stating that some of these features may not be available without a hard drive, it says some Services may not be available, but makes no such note to a hard drive, only a headset or camera.toxicmog

I too thought that it wasn't indicated on the box, however the indicated requirement is buried in the fine print on the back of the box.

I am utterly dumbfounded as to why people use the Arcade when doing price comparisons in System Wars. The Arcade model is so horribly gimped by comparison to the other 360 models, it's not even funny. I mean, even the cheapest PS3 has all the same functionality as any other PS3 with very rare exceptions.

So why do I say this? Well, I bought a 4GB "Slim" model. Let's be realistic here, with the support for flash drives now and the fact I have plenty of flash drive space, 4GB would ideally be plenty of internal memory for all my game data ever.

But that's what I get for thinking logically.

After putting in Halo 3, I find that Theater mode is completely blocked to me. That's correct. I cannot save any of my own films, anyone elses films, or even watch them in any shape or form. Theater mode on an Arcade, does absolutely nothing. Why? Because I don't have a Microsoft hard drive. Thats right, 4GB of space? Not enough, clearly.

But alright, I could deal with that. Theater is nice, but if I must I can live without it.

But it didn't stop there. Sorry, you also can't download map variants. Yes, map variants. Things that barely even take up a few megabytes. You can save your own though, thank god, so at least Forge isn't completely useless.

You'd think that'd be the end of it. It's illogical, but at least it makes sense in that Theater and map variants require extra files beyond your game save. So, silly as it may be, it has some (bad) reasoning.

Sorry though, it doesn't end there either. Wanna play co-op? Too bad, you need a hard drive. Wanna play Firefight in ODST? Sucks to be you, you need a hard drive to play that too. Yes, that's right you need a hard drive to play co-op too.

So with both Halo 3 and ODST, simply because I have an Arcade, I only get half the game. I may have enough space to use the whole game, but Microsoft doesn't care, you need one of their ridiculously priced hard drives to access features you don't even need that much space to use. And know what's great? To my knowledge, there are no hard drives I can even buy for the Slim. I'm up a creek without a paddle, so to speak.

So I guess what I'm getting at is, why compare the Arcade to the other consoles. The Arcade is gimped, horribly. The others? Not so much. When you buy any model Wii, you get the same Wii everyone else does. When you buy any model PS3, you get the same PS3 everyone else does. All your games work to their full extent. You buy a 360 Arcade? Sorry, you only get half your games now.

If you're gonna price compare, use a real 360, not this horribly gimped nightmare.

Skittles_McGee

[QUOTE="_SWAG_"]

i agree with the tc and what everyone said. the arcade is a ripoff, microsoft likes to rip you off, if youre a gamer stay away from the 360. the ps3 is the best because its not a ripoff i bought mine dayone

SLUSHiNaToR

He's just trying to get under peoples skin as a fakeboy. Ignore.

That's just horrible man I feel sorry for ya you should complain to microsoft. My friend got red ring on his 360 pro and they replaced it with an Elite 250Gb with 2 games of his choice. But you have to complain quite a bit to get that

yeh, that does suck.

it sounds A LOT like Xbox 360 BC needing a HDD for backwards compatibility. either they bottle-necked themselves from earlier choices, software compliancy or it's just some other problem.

I knew the Arcade was worse than the other models, but I didn't know that Arcade owners had it THAT bad. I feel for you Skittles. =\ What are you going to do? Are you going to stick with the Arcade or buy one of the better models or...?

You should be more grateful. 20 years ago, people would kill for 4gb.

You should be more grateful. 20 years ago, people would kill for 4gb.

Cruxis27

The space isn't a problem; with smart management 4gb can be more than enough. The problem lies in how bungie has made the microsoft HDD an absolute REQUIREMENT for certain game features. It doesn't matter that 4gb is enough space, simply not having a HDD means you can't play firefight, can't download other people's forge maps, can't do alot of things.

Once again, not because of space limitation, but because there is no HDD installed.

I always had the suspicion that the Arcade wasn't even worth the small amount of money. :P

Op, you have a history of bashing the 360 and Live, so don't blame me when I don't take your posts seriously. Lose half your games with arcade? Exaggerate much?

I don't have my Xbox 360 online. I paid about 200 dollars total for my Xbox 360 Arcade with a 20 GB refurbished hard drive right before the Xbox 360 S was announced, and I regret it 100%. The 4 GB console is perfect for me. The built in WiFi would make it a hell of a lot easier to install firmware updates (my router is on the opposite end of the house from my Xbox), the extra USB ports would be nice (I have the HD-DVD drive, I use flash drives occasionally, I wouldn't have to use one on a WiFi adapter, etc). I am also considering picking up Kinect to play Dance Central, Child of Eden, and Sonic Free Riders (though I won't pay Kinect's launch price). Not having to use up another USB port or an external power supply would be awesome, but only the 4 GB has the dedicated Kinect port. And I'm on my second Jasper 360 (so don't tell me Jaspers don't RRoD). By all accounts, the Xbox 360 S is a more reliable piece of hardware. Basically, I would be five times happier with my 200 dollar Xbox purchase if I got the 4 GB model. I feel like I got hosed.savebattery

I am utterly dumbfounded as to why people use the Arcade when doing price comparisons in System Wars. The Arcade model is so horribly gimped by comparison to the other 360 models, it's not even funny. I mean, even the cheapest PS3 has all the same functionality as any other PS3 with very rare exceptions.

So why do I say this? Well, I bought a 4GB "Slim" model. Let's be realistic here, with the support for flash drives now and the fact I have plenty of flash drive space, 4GB would ideally be plenty of internal memory for all my game data ever.

But that's what I get for thinking logically.

After putting in Halo 3, I find that Theater mode is completely blocked to me. That's correct. I cannot save any of my own films, anyone elses films, or even watch them in any shape or form. Theater mode on an Arcade, does absolutely nothing. Why? Because I don't have a Microsoft hard drive. Thats right, 4GB of space? Not enough, clearly.

But alright, I could deal with that. Theater is nice, but if I must I can live without it.

But it didn't stop there. Sorry, you also can't download map variants. Yes, map variants. Things that barely even take up a few megabytes. You can save your own though, thank god, so at least Forge isn't completely useless.

You'd think that'd be the end of it. It's illogical, but at least it makes sense in that Theater and map variants require extra files beyond your game save. So, silly as it may be, it has some (bad) reasoning.

Sorry though, it doesn't end there either. Wanna play co-op? Too bad, you need a hard drive. Wanna play Firefight in ODST? Sucks to be you, you need a hard drive to play that too. Yes, that's right you need a hard drive to play co-op too.

So with both Halo 3 and ODST, simply because I have an Arcade, I only get half the game. I may have enough space to use the whole game, but Microsoft doesn't care, you need one of their ridiculously priced hard drives to access features you don't even need that much space to use. And know what's great? To my knowledge, there are no hard drives I can even buy for the Slim. I'm up a creek without a paddle, so to speak.

So I guess what I'm getting at is, why compare the Arcade to the other consoles. The Arcade is gimped, horribly. The others? Not so much. When you buy any model Wii, you get the same Wii everyone else does. When you buy any model PS3, you get the same PS3 everyone else does. All your games work to their full extent. You buy a 360 Arcade? Sorry, you only get half your games now.

If you're gonna price compare, use a real 360, not this horribly gimped nightmare.

Skittles_McGee

Gimped? what a horrible choice of words. so halo 3 and ODST have features you cant use with the arcade model? who cares? ever think of it like this maybe? maybe someone cannot afford a 300 dollar gaming system and maybe can afford a 200 dollar gaming system? ever think that maybe they dont like Halo and myabe want to play the other thousand or so titles the 360 has to offer? also, the arcade 360 has the ability to be upgraded when so and so has the extra money available. this is a terrible argument

YIKES. I'm too lazy to skim through the rest of the thread, but presumably this is a Halo 3/ODST-only issue, correct? I know Halo 3/ODST does some odd things (at least compared to other 360 titles) with the HDD (ie it does a ****-ton of caching, which is why installing to HDD actually increases load times), so hopefully it's more an issue of lack of foresight on Bungie's part than an out-and-out problem with your 360.

Op, you have a history of bashing the 360 and Live, so don't blame me when I don't take your posts seriously. Lose half your games with arcade? Exaggerate much?

crusadernm

Could someone get the worlds smallest violin in here.
All i'm reading is your pissed off that a game created before the memory stick support, before the slim, that would have to be updated quite alot for it to work with the slims internal memory, or memory sticks doesn't work completely... yeah thats a given, and the fact you couldn't figure that out before hand is more of a comment on your reasoning abbility and common sense then whether the arcade is a bad product.

WilliamRLBaker

Could someone get the worlds smallest violin in here.
All i'm reading is your pissed off that a game created before the memory stick support, before the slim, that would have to be updated quite alot for it to work with the slims internal memory, or memory sticks doesn't work completely... yeah thats a given, and the fact you couldn't figure that out before hand is more of a comment on your reasoning abbility and common sense then whether the arcade is a bad product.

WilliamRLBaker

This is more about, why do people on this board bother saying to buy an Arcade. Often when you see talk of prices, they use the price of the Arcade model. As I've said, thats nonsense. Why in the world would you want this?

[QUOTE="Skittles_McGee"]

I am utterly dumbfounded as to why people use the Arcade when doing price comparisons in System Wars. The Arcade model is so horribly gimped by comparison to the other 360 models, it's not even funny. I mean, even the cheapest PS3 has all the same functionality as any other PS3 with very rare exceptions.

So why do I say this? Well, I bought a 4GB "Slim" model. Let's be realistic here, with the support for flash drives now and the fact I have plenty of flash drive space, 4GB would ideally be plenty of internal memory for all my game data ever.

But that's what I get for thinking logically.

After putting in Halo 3, I find that Theater mode is completely blocked to me. That's correct. I cannot save any of my own films, anyone elses films, or even watch them in any shape or form. Theater mode on an Arcade, does absolutely nothing. Why? Because I don't have a Microsoft hard drive. Thats right, 4GB of space? Not enough, clearly.

But alright, I could deal with that. Theater is nice, but if I must I can live without it.

But it didn't stop there. Sorry, you also can't download map variants. Yes, map variants. Things that barely even take up a few megabytes. You can save your own though, thank god, so at least Forge isn't completely useless.

You'd think that'd be the end of it. It's illogical, but at least it makes sense in that Theater and map variants require extra files beyond your game save. So, silly as it may be, it has some (bad) reasoning.

Sorry though, it doesn't end there either. Wanna play co-op? Too bad, you need a hard drive. Wanna play Firefight in ODST? Sucks to be you, you need a hard drive to play that too. Yes, that's right you need a hard drive to play co-op too.

So with both Halo 3 and ODST, simply because I have an Arcade, I only get half the game. I may have enough space to use the whole game, but Microsoft doesn't care, you need one of their ridiculously priced hard drives to access features you don't even need that much space to use. And know what's great? To my knowledge, there are no hard drives I can even buy for the Slim. I'm up a creek without a paddle, so to speak.

So I guess what I'm getting at is, why compare the Arcade to the other consoles. The Arcade is gimped, horribly. The others? Not so much. When you buy any model Wii, you get the same Wii everyone else does. When you buy any model PS3, you get the same PS3 everyone else does. All your games work to their full extent. You buy a 360 Arcade? Sorry, you only get half your games now.

If you're gonna price compare, use a real 360, not this horribly gimped nightmare.

Gimped? what a horrible choice of words. so halo 3 and ODST have features you cant use with the arcade model? who cares? ever think of it like this maybe? maybe someone cannot afford a 300 dollar gaming system and maybe can afford a 200 dollar gaming system? ever think that maybe they dont like Halo and myabe want to play the other thousand or so titles the 360 has to offer? also, the arcade 360 has the ability to be upgraded when so and so has the extra money available. this is a terrible argument

I fully support this thread. I would talk about why the Arcade is such a bad deal, but I think that has been discussed enough already. :P

[QUOTE="Skittles_McGee"][QUOTE="CuteCakes"] Why should I? Clearly the Arcade model never was and isn't aimed at gamers, perhaps you should stop being so cheap?CuteCakes

sorry... but you come off as a major MS fanboy.. I could tell since you responded in a very negative way... "its not MS fault..its your fault"and " Why should I? Clearly the Arcade model never was and isn't aimed at gamers perhaps you should stop being so cheap" it wasnt meant for gamers?? then why the heck is it being sold and marketed towards gamers:|

[QUOTE="CuteCakes"][QUOTE="Skittles_McGee"] Yes, how dare I not give Microsoft every last dime of my money. I should have spent more money for something I didn't logically need (well, at the time). Why didn't I think of that? :|devious742

sorry... but you come off as a major MS fanboy.. I could tell since you responded in a very negative way... "its not MS fault..its your fault"and " Why should I? Clearly the Arcade model never was and isn't aimed at gamers perhaps you should stop being so cheap" it wasnt meant for gamers?? then why the heck is it being sold and marketed towards gamers:|

[QUOTE="devious742"]

[QUOTE="CuteCakes"] Meh, its your fault. You come here complaining about crap that you should have known about before you decided to make the purchase so I really have zero sympathy for you.Skittles_McGee

sorry... but you come off as a major MS fanboy.. I could tell since you responded in a very negative way... "its not MS fault..its your fault"and " Why should I? Clearly the Arcade model never was and isn't aimed at gamers perhaps you should stop being so cheap" it wasnt meant for gamers?? then why the heck is it being sold and marketed towards gamers:|

[QUOTE="CuteCakes"][QUOTE="Skittles_McGee"] Yes, how dare I not give Microsoft every last dime of my money. I should have spent more money for something I didn't logically need (well, at the time). Why didn't I think of that? :|devious742

sorry... but you come off as a major MS fanboy.. I could tell since you responded in a very negative way... "its not MS fault..its your fault"and " Why should I? Clearly the Arcade model never was and isn't aimed at gamers perhaps you should stop being so cheap" it wasnt meant for gamers?? then why the heck is it being sold and marketed towards gamers:|

Well you used two Bungie games, and those tend to have issues with HDDs.GulliversTravel

[QUOTE="GulliversTravel"]Well you used two Bungie games, and those tend to have issues with HDDs.Skittles_McGee

[QUOTE="Skittles_McGee"][QUOTE="GulliversTravel"]Well you used two Bungie games, and those tend to have issues with HDDs.The_Game21x

[QUOTE="Skittles_McGee"][QUOTE="GulliversTravel"]Well you used two Bungie games, and those tend to have issues with HDDs.The_Game21x

holy hell, it does make a lot of sense actually.

I've always known about Halo 3 actually performing worse after an HDD install. but with that bit of information, it pieces together nicely.

as for that being the excuse, it's not quite acceptable. but still good to know that whole story.

Bungie.net and Xbox.com is that way. Maybe they can help you out somehow if you can't help yourself by getting USB storage devices right now or later in the future.

[QUOTE="The_Game21x"][QUOTE="Skittles_McGee"] But you wouldn't think you'd be denied the ability to play co-op, because of an HDD (or lack thereof). That's just completely illogical.Skittles_McGee

[QUOTE="Skittles_McGee"][QUOTE="The_Game21x"] Sure it's logical. :? Bungie has said numerous times that Halo 3 uses the HDD for caching, including in response to the reduced performance that comes with installing Halo 3 to the Hard Drive since the game has to access data on the hard drive and cache it somewhere else on the same drive. I'm not saying MS is "right" in having not released an update to fix this sort of thing (especially since internal flash memory would likely be faster than the hard drive anyway) but it's not their fault that you didn't know what you were getting into when you bought the new system. That being said, I really do hope they release an update that allows the internal memory to be treated the same as a hard drive in cases like these. It's really stupid that they haven't done such a thing already.The_Game21x

I thought there was that leak of a 250GB HDD add-on so presumably you could get that if and when it comes out - although the price in the rumor/leak was US$129.