Xbox 360 Pro Holiday Bundle 2008 Includes 60GB Hard Drive
List Price: $299.99
Our Price: $299.99
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Microsoft
Average Customer Rating:
Batteries Included: 0 Binding: Video Game Brand: Microsoft EAN: 0882224734479 Feature: White finish Graphics Memory Size: 10 Is Autographed: 0 Is Memorabilia: 0 Label: Microsoft Manufacturer: Microsoft Model: 52T-00141 Platform: Xbox 360 Publisher: Microsoft Release Date: 2008-10-08 Studio: Microsoft
Features
White finish 60GB hard drive Wireless controller Go online with Xbox Live Includes 2 games - LEGO Indiana Jones and Kung Fu Panda
Bring gaming to life in your living room with the Xbox Video Game System, the essential center-piece to any home entertainment set up. Beneath the cool, tough exterior is a system capable of powering the very best single and multiplayer gaming experiences available today.Designed to push gaming to the absolute limit, the Xbox console delivers incredible graphics and cinematic sound that will drop you and your friends deep into the heart of the action. The immense range of top-class games and online gaming with Xbox Live mean there will never be another dull moment.
Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating: Summary: XBOX 360 System Bundle 60GB 2008 Comment: Have only had the system for a few days. Appears to be what we expected and as we purchase games more suited for mature teens and adults, we think that we will find the system to exceed our expectations. So far we recommend it highly.
Xbox 360 Pro Holiday Bundle 2008 Includes 60GB Hard Drive Customer Rating: Summary: Best console option by far Comment: The Xbox 360 is a very versatile, powerful, and solid system that is far superior to the PS3 from my experience. There is an Xbox 360, Wii, and PS3 in my house and honestly, the Wii is only played when a group of people are over, the PS3 for blu-ray (though blu-ray players are cheap now and you can buy an Xbox and blu-ray player for less than the PS3), and the Xbox for EVERYTHING else. We watch netflix movies on the xbox 360, play games on xbox live all the time, have fun with the wide variety of xbox arcade games available, and keep in touch with friends and family with chat and messaging. It is a much more complete, capable system and the consumer numbers just go to show that the xbox will outlast and outperform the PS3 (Wii is basically an entirely separate category with a different target consumer). My advice though... go with the 360 if you want a system that is superior, complete, and a much better value. Cheers! Customer Rating: Summary: Middle of the road system Comment: I've been playing video games since the NES, and for a long time I had put off buying a next gen system, considering the PS2 to be the end of the road for me: The PS3s were WAY beyond my budget, the 360s had a huge failure rate, and I just might be the only person on the face of the earth who never enjoyed the Wii.
Finally after eyeing all the titles like The Orange Box, Bioshock, and FEAR that I had wanted to play for so long, I caved and bought a 360 Arcade in November. My original plan was to spend less, save on the warranty, and upgrade with an HDD later. DO NOT DO THIS. It ended up costing roughly the same as the current 60GB pro bundle (only about thirty less) and that was with a used 20GB HDD from the original bundles. While you could buy an arcade along with a 60 GB Pro upgrade kit later for a total of three hundred currently, you'll still want to upgrade your video cable to at least component, and might (if you don't already have extra) want an ethernet cable too. The Pro comes with both of these saving you about fifty to sixty dollars more depending on where you shop. Not to mention if you're smart you'll toss an extended warranty on that other HDD you just bought to cover a failure, raising its price even further. While everything is capable of being covered under one blanket warranty with the pro. It also comes with two free full games, although I'll probably never play Kung-fu Panda.
If you didn't really understand what I'm trying to say here it's that the Pro is the middle child, and usually best bet, in a series of three versions of the Xbox. There seems to be a lot of confusion about them as well so I'll clear that up now...
The Arcade is the basic, plug and play system. It has no HDD to store large amounts of data on, so you can't rip music to it or put pictures on it. Nor is it backwards compatible with the old Xbox games. You also (and most importantly) can't download most content from the marketplace or play the original Xbox games due to the absence of it.
However, you CAN STILL SAVE YOUR GAME among other things thanks to the complimentary 256MB memory card. Although this will only last so long. For example, a single save in Fallout 3 averages me about 4MBs each.
Also, while your standard AV cables are acceptable, you get much sharper and more accurate color from a component or HDMI cable. Neither of which come with this bundle.
And as far as games go, the Arcade leaves much to be desired. Granted, the games amuse for a while, but you can get the same enjoyment out of the demos (most of which are for the same games) that come preloaded on the Pro or Elite, plus if you don't like them you aren't out any money.
Not to mention no headset is included, which isn't a must but is nice when you're online with friends and like to actually articulate just what kind of support you need to capture the other flag.
The Pro comes with that component cable I mentioned, which when run in HD bumps the resolution up to 720p and can also be used with any non-HD TV with that same crisp color and sharp image so long as it has component ports. I'm currently running it on an HD compatible cathode ray tube (old big TV) with no problems. It also includes a wired headset (plugs into the controller), an ethernet cable so it's online ready, the two games, and a 60GB HDD.
The extra forty gigs on this really comes in handy as on the old 20 GB pro bundles you really only had around thirteen after formatting it while the rest was used for system data. The drive is also preloaded with things like gamer pictures for your profile, and some pretty fun demos. I still play Heavy Weapon and Geometry wars a lot myself and will until I buy the full versions whenever I get around to that.
Since it has a hard drive, this also means you have space to download things like movies, demos, game updates, etc. Just like you would for your PC. You can even install a game to your drive and play it from there to cut down on noise and heat since the disc isn't spinning nearly as much. Granted, you're only going to be able to fit five or six games on here at a time depending on how much other stuff you have on there, but I don't usually find myself playing more games than that at once anyway and just delete whatever I haven't used in a while. You can always reinstall it later. :)
You'll probably notice your games running a bit smother too since that drive space allows for disk caching, which takes a bit of strain off the processing units.
All in all a great rounder that seems to be the console of choice for almost everyone, and for good reason.
Last but not least is the Elite. Also called the "New retard edition" by some launch articles, it's basically the just the Pro painted black with a 120GB drive, some free live time (more on that later), and an HDMI cable. I really can't think of any reason to recommend this unless you really like the color black, or hate third party cables, since you can save money by buying a third party cable or used cable separately. And if you REALLY need the space you can always upgrade either of the others with a 120GB HDD later anyway.
That's about it. Other than that they're essentially all the same... None of them have Li batteries in the controllers out of the box, and run on double a's until you pic up a play and charge kit yourself.
The failure rates, although much lower than the launch systems, are still present and even across the board since they all have the same chipset. So make sure you say yes when asked if you want that extended warranty, because while Microsoft offers a standard extended warranty on a "Red Ring of Death" situation, sending YOUR system in doesn't always mean you get YOUR system back. It isn't uncommon for someone to get someone else's refurbished system in return, and I'm unsure of how they handle saved data (if at all).
However, when purchased virtually anywhere else with a new warranty, any replicated failures mean you get a new system on the spot (usually).
So why should you buy this over the more powerful PS3, or weaker but more innovative Wii? To be blunt, power isn't everything and innovation means nothing if all your games are geared for the newly breed or nearly dead.
Despite the fact that the system doubles as a blu-ray player, currently the PS3 is an tool developers aren't using to it's full potential. While games have better lighting effects and can usually run at a high frame per second rate more consistently, I was willing to sacrifice minor graphical prowess for a larger library and wider variety of games that were more appealing to me. And that's what it's all about; the games.
After all it doesn't really matter how many computations per second your hardware is capable of if all it can play is something you don't enjoy.
Which is the same reason I didn't really get into anything on the Wii other than Trauma Center when I it too. Despite its revolutionary control scheme, everything seemed was either a port that was awkwardly shoe-horned into a broken control scheme, or something that while cute, was far to kiddy for me to really enjoy.
The overall flaw is the same problem Nintendo has had for a while now, being that fun interesting games like Resident Evil, Guitar Hero, and even flagships like Twilight Princess are available on other (or previous) systems where they play better, and in return for their renewed success your loyalty is rewarded with regurgitated Poke'mon tripe. Granted you can purchase and play older games for systems like the NES, SNES, or even N64 but that's what free emulators and ROMs are for.
Again, these are just my personal opinions. There isn't anything really wrong with the design of the other systems, their games just weren't for me.
The 360 is not without it's own flaws though. In addition to the ever present (no matter how unlikely) risk of the RROD, multiplayer is not free on the 360, nor is it wireless capable out of the box.
While both are huge detractions since on each other system wireless and online play is supported from the start, not being wireless capable alone wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the fact that the Microsoft adapter costs a c-note new in box, and the other cheaper Linksys ones that were compatible are no longer in production. While there is a sixty to seventy dollar third party unit, it still isn't a huge improvement since you can get the same tech, which does the same thing, for your laptop for about thirty bucks at Walmart. What this is is just a case of Microsoft trying to make more money by locking you to their product.
As far as not being able to access multiplayer without paying fifty bucks a year for a "Gold" (i.e. premium) Xbox live account, it's just asinine. I can understand paying for new content for games, like new maps or guns. I don't have a problem with that. But what Microsoft is asking you to do here is to pay to access a feature you already have, on a game you already own, with the system you already bought, over a connection you already pay for.
Which is really quite tragic since it's the only thing keeping my from giving this a perfect score.
My advice is to look carefully at the library of games for each system and decide what's important to you. Although, if you do plan on playing a lot of games that support multiplayer and are also available on the PS3, you may want to go with that instead to save money in the long run.
However, if you just don't plan on playing online too much in general, the 360 is definitely the way to go. Customer Rating: Summary: Not a good Christmas Comment: I bought this cause of the price drop and games for my kids,now only 1 day after Christmas,it will not work at all,the only thing it does is gives you three red lights,I contacted Microsoft and they sent me a refurbished unit with memory cards,at least they did same day shipping for me after arguing on the phone,on the piece of crap I just bought my kids,but the xbox they sent had no hard drive.i argued for 15 min on the phone with customer service.They finally sent me a hard drive but I am very upset about how I was treated.I did some research on my own and called my brothers son and he said that the xbox is not a reliable piece of hard ware,Now I know,I should have got my kids a Wii but could not find one but I will never buy another Microsoft Product.
