@The Magnificen7: Hey! They changed teh picture. That's not the interface I said was awesome.

The Magnificen7

@Mascott: That's technology progress for you. Hard drives and memory get cheaper with time. Your only have two choices: never buy any technology item, or accept it any enjoy your purchase!

LittleJon

No, microsoft, you can never have my heart, how dare you try to steal it with such wonderful ploys and plots and jewlrey, our parents would never agree to this love!

UncleBenny

Me so happy. I'll be buying a 120 GB HDD now. For a lowered price of course. Cough cough. Also, that interface above looks AWESOME. I've always wanted to see that. Maybe add some colour behind it. Like, oh, I dunno, as in existing themes? Cough cough. Damn, I need some Robitussin or some Halls. Cough.

The Magnificen7

@benihanagt: Probably not cooler. The disc doesn't exactly make a lot of heat by spinning. Its the processor that makes all the heat.

Uberdude328i

Sweet!! I just got a 1680x1050 monitor. Beautiful

Mars6277

@PollockRoc: Haha exactly. You beat me to the punch. Great to hear that microsoft is running with a new UI, etc.

AlexLand

@Jamezspot: so does sony's MANDATORY 8gb installs for games that the 360 plays without an install... Microsoft's full install has real benefits, no disc noise, 100% faster running as the entire game is on the drive not just pieces. and did i mention it's OPTIONAL

phantam

Microsoft = winz

Luuey

@pdditty: Wait a second...You're complaining about having to get off of your ass to put a disc in the console? How lazy can you possibly be? Are you in a contest or something?

PollockRoc

@Jamezspot: not really if you think about it. lets say u just got a new game and ur playing constantly. if you copied it to the hd and just left the disc in the drive you would be able to load the game much much faster (anyone with a hacked original xbox can attest to that)

Johnny Chimpo

@OGHowie: i was just about to say that actually... they have the platform, they now have the interface for the games... they have the payment platform, and to tell you the truth if they did this, i'd hands down go get another 360 and put it in my bedroom... though if they did this, i'd say they would have to prorate the $ to say 50$ or 45$ for the downloadable edition of brand new games as no packaging and distribution on their side.

this reminds me i do need a 360 for my room (i need an extender 2.0) ... maybe i'll just pick up that 60 or a 120 elite :)

phantam

ya 20gb is a bummer for this but after 3 years of playing my 360 i think i can crack out my credit card for a 60gb drive

phantam

Playing games directly off HDD if the disk still has to be in just sounds like a waste of HDD space...

Jamezspot

@leetXcore: HAHAHAHAHAA

michelinman85

Paving the way for MS to sell complete Xbox 360 games over Live.

OGHowie

im probably getting a 60gb(when it comes out) or the 120gb elite so this could work out nicely but if i get the 20gb then it will just kill my harddrive

koeramco

@Mascott: Not to be a whiner, but I also am in this boat. Bummer...

ezman

Damn it.

For a second, I saw myself renting every game and ripping it with my unlimited game pass.

leetXcore

Here's hoping they start selling a stand alone 60gb drive. My 20gb is filling up fast, and thats without music, movies, or demos. I even deleted 99% of the gamerpics and themes.

PollockRoc

It sounds cool when you just read it but when you dig deep you find its not what its cracked up to be. Its cool that there will be faster load times and the system will be quieter but its not like its some revolutionary new way to play games. You still need to the game to be in the disc tray for piracy concerns. So at the end of the day I still have to get up (like I always been doing) and put the game I want to play in the drive.

pdditty

That's only good for the people with the Elite and the people who waited for the 60 gig hard drive. I currently have a 20 that I have to constantly manage, and it's just a headache. Now, 5 months after getting a 360, they come out with something bigger and better that I need to buy.

MICROSOFT IS TURNING INTO APPLE.

Mascott

It's a two side blade(yes, pun), this is.

Faster loads and Gigabytes of wasted space.
Make a better ownership system, Xbox team.

Groggy Banana

This will make hard drives sell three times as much, but this also just opened up a whole new schebang for hackers :)

jsmjr816

Finally be able to put to use the 120GB hard drive I have. Wasn't gonna fill that thing up with overpriced 128 mb XBLA games.

IMarcus

Do they make Daemon Tools Lite for the Xbox yet?!

michelinman85

Pros:
Quieter
Cooler (I assume without a disk spinning the system would run cooler, maybe not)
Faster load times

Sounds sweet to me if you have the Hard Drive space

benihanagt

Cool! I just need a bigger hard drive now.

ripfire

"though you'll still need the game inserted" .... at least for the first day.

UofITom

@robinandtami: Oh man, the day I discovered how to take the plastic off those slices... that was a good day. Life changing. I miss my childhood. But now I get a 360 Avatar, so I can relive my "Ken Doll" phase. ANd uh ... yeah, that's pretty much exactly what you think it is...

The Magnificen7

I'm still using my 1st release 360 with no problems other than the space issues of my 20 gig drive. This sounds like a reason to grab an elite, but why not let me buy an external drive for the damn thing and be done with it?

Epaminondas

Sounds like a good way to improve performance on any game with long load times. Some games never seem to have them, whereas others are a real beating. Nice to know that I'll be able to speed up some of them.

I just hope that this doesn't cause game developers to get lazy and just recommend a hard drive install to improve performance.

Luke

My ears that you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

fastm3driver

Load times and noise have never really bothered me. I'm patient and my ginormous surround sound system drowns out any noise. I'll still give this a go though, and then probably decide it's the best thing since cheese in individually wrapped slices.

robinandtami

Oh wow! this is Awesome! I am so excited :)

nizzy1115

Just install your own HD, what's the matter with all you people complaining about the 20GB HD? Why can't you buy a larger hard drive and swap it out yourself? Show some gusto!

nka

I thought there was already a way to disassemble the stock HD enclousure, properly format (via SW on a PC) any'ol HD that would fit and swap it in?

I def could be wrong I didn't look into it very deeply...

bpapa9013

That's pretty awesome. I'm sure someone will come up with some hack or something though to let you play games without the game in there.

videoCWK

@OGHowie: god i hope so

BrandenF

It is quite tempting to ebay my 20GB drive just before the 60GB is released and then buy a 60GB subsidised, although if microsoft allowed the use of a normal USB external drive to store game rips this would be even better, although i highly doubt this will ever happen...

hired_geek

someone's going to make a disk image for a "UNIVERSAL DISK" that will make the XBOX think that it has the right disk in the tray for whatever game you play off the HD.

TAKE THAT "To play this disk put it in an XBOX360 Console." you fcuking nonsensical error message! WTF did you think I put it, in the toaster?!?!?

bpapa9013

oops, that was supposed to be:
@nka: ...

@bpapa9013: Fail.

Just thought I would get that out of the way.

bpapa9013

@bpapa9013: are you challenging us to devel the homebrew ourselves, or is there already an established process/software tool that can accomplish this?

bpapa9013

Nice. I guess I'll finally need to do the G00glez and find out if there's a decent hack to get a really big drive into the Xbox 360. No way I'm paying through the nose for Microsoft's lame 120 GB drive, when I can get a 250-300 GB for much cheaper and install it myself.

I have to say that Sony gets the win for allowing user swaps of the hard drive.

Ain't competition grand! I have both an XBox 360 and a PS3, so it's a win-win for me each time they try to outdo each other.

ChootinDaChit

@ChootinDaChit: You can only add a 120GB drive even with hacking an off-the-shelf one. They sign the low sectors of the disc and somehow store the size the HDD should be in them, so even if you buy a 250GB drive... surprise! It'll be 120 when you put those sectors on the disc.

I'm happy about this, since I have a (mostly empty) Elite and only a handful of games. But I have to say that if they're adding resolutions, try 1360x768 (the native res of most 720p HDTV panels)! Now if I could have that w/o scaling, that would be spectacular.

rentahero1

@hired_geek: "It is quite tempting to ebay my 20GB drive just before the 60GB..."

Umm. Don't you want to transfer your stuff before you part with your 20GB?

ripfire

These UI updates and Live and everything are going to make this generation very long-winded. Hardware updates are at least 2 more years away. at least.
It's hard to imagine what a truly NEW console would do. Hopefully they release it at the right time- not too soon and not too late. Only after some current console refreshes, of course.

oo0cyst0oo

@Mascott: @ezman: @hired_geek: Um...there's a 120GB hard drive option you know, which can be found for $135 if you look around.

Zlevee

I am impressed. VERY impressed. MS continues to add many USEFUL features to their console's system.

I firmly believe that this is to further widen the gap between the 360 and PS3.

While PS3 owners are getting 360 like features very slowly for free, the 360 is totally storming away with a new path leaving Sony behind scratching their heads on how they are going to catch up.

Maybe Sony should work extra hard or add more devs to pumping out the PSN stuff....

CutePuppyz

In other news, piracy soars over 9000%

Pi-face

@CutePuppyz: Xbox 360 is a PS3 wanna-be. Here's the history:

Newsflash: PS3 has Blu-ray drive
360 fanboys: We don't need no stinkin' HD movies. We just wanna play games!

Newsflash: 360 gets HD-DVD drive
360 fanboys: Yeah, take that Sony! We can watch HD movies too!

----------------------------------------------------------

Newsflash: PS3 has HDMI
360 fanboys: We don't need no stinkin' HDMI. Useless crap!

Newsflash: 360 gets HDMI
360 fanboys: Yeah, take that Sony! We now have HDMI too!

----------------------------------------------------------

Newsflash: PS3 gets 80GB hard drive
360 fanboys: We don't need no stinkin' 80GB HD. All we need is 20GB! Just delete the demos when we're done!

Newsflash: 360 gets 60GB hard drive
360 fanboys: Yeah, take that Sony! We now have bigger HD's too!

----------------------------------------------------------

Newsflash: PS3 gets Final Fantasy 13 exclusively
360 fanboys: We don't need no stinkin' RPG crap. We just need FPS!

Newsflash: 360 also getting Final Fantasy 13
360 fanboys: Yeah, take that Sony! We can play FF13 too!

----------------------------------------------------------

Newsflash: PS3 gets HD game installs
360 fanboys: We don't need no stinkin' game installs! LOL, PS3 fanboys need to wait for their game to install!

Newsflash: 360 gets HD game installs
360 fanboys: Yeah, take that Sony! We can now install our games too!

So you see, it is the 360 that is playing catch up to the PS3. But it's too late, because the PS3 is light years ahead of the 360. Maybe next generation...

xAppleFan

This is even more reason to get the 60GB XBOX 360. Nice features!

zed0

@xAppleFan: I see your point, but I think it goes both ways. I'm not quite the history buff I'd need to be to have a serious discussion about this, but all of PSN is awfully reminiscent of XBL. That's not a bad thing, it's just the way the industry moves forward. Everyone builds on what came before. And I think Xbox remains an innovator in a lot of ways.

Anyway--I guess I like having the option, but since you still need the disc in, I'm not sure it'll be all that useful. Once they start offering full games for download (aside from Xbox Originals) I'll be more interested.

tophtucker

Now, if only I had room left on my 20GB HD... well, about time I upgraded anyways

Posavoie

Which games have longer loading times? I could see myself installing Mass Effect if I got back into playing it to help with the texture pop-in. Or maybe Oblivion to help with loading. Hmm, so maybe Fallout 3 since it seems kinda close to Oblivion.
What long loading times have yall run into?

Numerous

@xAppleFan:
What about the memory issue? PS# has only 256 megs for texture while 360 has 512 of shared memory that can be balanced at the programmers will. That equals gears of war.
Have you seen the indecent aliasing on MGS4? Xbox has also 10 megs of mem in the graphics chip itself. Free anti-aliasing.

Ariel_Wollinger

@xAppleFan: So we get everything the PS3 has but cheaper..? Awesome.

Vindicoth

@pdditty: So its like a PC..? Big deal :D

Vindicoth

@tophtucker: Agreed. The best thing about the 360 is Xbox Live. They definitely got that right. Sony needs to do a little catching up in that department. Also, I give MS a lot of credit for coming out of nowhere and creating the Xbox to take on Sony's mighty Playstation. This creates competition which is ultimately good for the consumer.

xAppleFan

@xAppleFan: While I could inundate you with counter exmples, it's not necessary. The simple truth is that the 360 was modular from the start, for the very reason that the console was supposed to be flexible and evolve over time. Optical Drives, Hard drives, new capabilities through software updates -- all modular things. HDMI being ommitted then built in to the new models without an upgrade option for previous buyers is an exception, but frankly not a compelling element of the specs with or without it. So this evolution was all loosely in the blueprint from the beginning, with the specifics to be worked out as demand or innovation dictated.

Seems to me like a better (and cheaper) way to build a console and have it last.

Zlevee

@Vindicoth: I guess that depends on how you look at it. While the Xbox 360 is cheaper than the PS3, the PS3 is a better value IMHO. Until the recent price cut, the $50 difference ($350 vs $400) was negligible. Xbox Live fees alone will run you $50 (PSN is free). Even in light of the price cut, which results in a $100 difference, the PS3 is a better value since it has free PSN play, built-in wireless (this alone is $100 for xbox), better build quality (small failure rate), and built-in Blu-ray player (this will cost you $300-$400 if purchased separately).

xAppleFan

@Ariel_Wollinger: I haven't heard of any memory issues for the PS3. They both have 512MB total ram. The PS3 has 256MB of VRAM and 256MB of main RAM vs. Xbox's 512MB shared RAM. However, the PS3 has XDR ram, which is faster & more efficient than Xbox's GDDR3 ram. In addition, the PS3's RSX can freely use as much of the 512MB total RAM because the Cell doesn't need much RAM because its fast enough.

Having recently finished MGS4, I can honestly say that I haven't noticed any aliasing issues. Everything about the game is top notch, including the complex and involving storyline.

xAppleFan

@Zlevee: While it is great that those who didn't need the extras can grab a 360 cheap, it isn't so great for those who bought the wireless and HD-DVD add on. I guess the same argument can be made for those who wanted to buy the PS3 but don't need the added cost of Blu-ray. Oh well, can't win them all...

xAppleFan

o yah and those gay "news flashes" just meen that the 360 get better every day, while the ps3 getter better, every 2 years

hobo_lord

@xAppleFan: i doubt that you EVER played xbox live. the reason i dont care about the wireless... cuz the online SUCKS on the ps3.

ur JUST like my freind, making up exuses to cover up and defend ur ps3. Go on the ps3 topics, do they have bratty 360 fans on them? no, cuz we know what our 360 can do.

xbox live is worth the money, ur just exaggerating the "$50" for live. Live is $5 bucks a month, or 7 for month to month. If people are going to whine about 7 bucks per month, then why buy a 300 dollar console?

hobo_lord

@Pi-face:

You need the disc to play it.

@xAppleFan:

Hey look, it's the console warriors.

Cower in fear.

ZackHoagie

I think that someway hackers are going to get by this disc playing thing? I kinda wish i had gotten an xbox now cause they are going to have free streaming movies with netflix if you have a gold membership im also kinda happy this is happenin cause i know sony is going to do something about my ps3 haha

pablo113

ANSWER THIS MICROSOFT- since it only needs a security verification that you own the game, can we put games in the hddvd player so it actually has a use now??

holtchristian3

I still have a piddly little 20GB, but given that I have the electic power, and given I have to delete my TV shows I bought, I'm not gonna do it. I mean, I will try it with Halo 3 or some game with some long-as-hell load times, but I like the disc spinning sound. Just like bubble wrap.

michaelleung

@hobo_lord: Oh, I've played Xbox Live, for all of 3 weeks, that's when I got the RROD. The Xbox went straight back to the store and the PS3 came home with me.

It's ironic you say that I'm making up excuses to cover up and defend the PS3 when in reality, that's what your post was trying to do for the Xbox.

So I'm exaggerating the $50 cost for Live am I ? By your own admission, it cost $5/month x 12 = $60/year. Uh, that would be even more than my $50 quote.

xAppleFan

@hobo_lord: How do you figure the PS3 is getting better every 2 years when, even with all those "gay news flashes", the Xbox is just finally coming around to getting the features the PS3 already had?

xAppleFan

My friends and I were talking about this when the Elite came out. We saw 120 GB and thought "Gee, sure would be nice to use all that space.". I've owned my Xbox since October '06, and I still have 9.66 GB left on my current HDD. I guess I'll have to upgrade for this.

Oh I've sent the damned thing back 3 times, it's mangled $250 dollars worth of discs, and they made me pay for a pending RROD the 3rd time I sent it back. Thanks MS. Makes me wish more of my friends had a PS3, and that it actually had games I wanted to play ATM. GT5 should have been out a year ago.

Admiral Cat