The General 360 Owners/Buyers FAQ Thread (Updated 1/15/10)

This may have been answered somewhere, but how come my games play in Dolby Digital, but none seem to have 5.1? Is there any games that do?
 
I've been looking into purchasing a 360 arcade console as of late and could use some advice. I currently own an old (January 2006) xenon model 360 console and have read extensively about the jasper motherboard revision (with the switch to a 65nm GPU). It seems that even the most die-hard jasper hunters are running on pure speculation as to when the new motherboard will hit. My original plan was to simply purchase a jasper console when it hit and sell my old xenon console. However, now I'm not even sure that the jasper 360's will hit before my current 360 is out of warranty (and I definitely don't want to be stuck with an out of warranty 360).

Anyway, long story short, I'm interested in picking up an arcade console (I already own a 120gb hard drive) at a store which offers a replacement plan. Which store currently offers the best replacement plan? When the jasper eventually becomes easy to find, I want to be able to swap my falcon console for a jasper. I've heard of people using Best Buy's replacement plan to switch out 360 hardware in the past, but I've also heard horror stories about their plan. Any tips?
 
That's dishonest at best. Just hold off until you can find an '09 model and buy that. Should be a Jasper at that point.
 
[quote name='Wolfpup']That's dishonest at best. Just hold off until you can find an '09 model and buy that. Should be a Jasper at that point.[/QUOTE]

It's hardly dishonest, but thanks for the judgment. The fact that no one can say more than "An '09 model should be a Jasper" is a testament to what I said about everyone speculating about the release date. I'm not really in the mood to wait god knows how long until this damn motherboard hits.

If I pay for a product replacement plan at a store, who is to say that I can't have it replaced at a later date? My plan wasn't to purposefully break my falcon console nor was it to pretend that it malfunctioned, it was simply to say that I would like to swap out my current console for another one because of a hardware change.
 
Yeah I'm pretty sure you can do that, without having to be dishonest. But I say get a 360 now, who is to say Jasper is going to fix everything? Remember the Falcon? A lot of good that revision did.
 
Well it did do some good. I guess failures fell from somewhere between 33-100% down to 16%...but that still sounds uber sleazy.
 
[quote name='Wolfpup']Well it did do some good. I guess failures fell from somewhere between 33-100% down to 16%...but that still sounds uber sleazy.[/QUOTE]

First of all, yes the falcon revision definitely seemed to help matters. Second, Wolfpup, would you mind explaining what exactly is so "uber sleazy" and "dishonest" about my idea? I understand that taking advantage of a store like Walmart's very liberal return policy is one thing, but taking advantage of a plan which one pays for is completely different. In your opinion, should one only take advantage of a replacement plan when the system breaks? If so, why would that be acceptable behavior but what I speak of not qualify as acceptable?

I don't want to sound hostile, but if there is some reasoning which is not yet evident to me, then I will rethink my 360 buying agenda (I'm definitely not even set upon doing the replacement plan idea....it was just an idea).
 
[quote name='thegamer4787']First of all, yes the falcon revision definitely seemed to help matters. Second, Wolfpup, would you mind explaining what exactly is so "uber sleazy" and "dishonest" about my idea? I understand that taking advantage of a store like Walmart's very liberal return policy is one thing, but taking advantage of a plan which one pays for is completely different. In your opinion, should one only take advantage of a replacement plan when the system breaks? If so, why would that be acceptable behavior.

I don't want to sound hostile, but if there is some reasoning which is not yet evident to me, then I will rethink my 360 buying agenda (I'm definitely not even set upon doing the replacement plan idea....it was just an idea).[/QUOTE]

If it's explicitly in the agreement that you can do that-but I HIGHLY doubt that's the case. It's for if it breaks, not if you want a newer piece of hardware that comes out. Wrecks it for those of us who just want a warranty...

[quote name='yukine']Really... hmm, I still got a RROD with my Falcon.[/QUOTE]

So far so good with mine, but given that I game on every platform, my Falcon has probably only seen
 
Not for nothing, but the purpose of a replacement plan is replace merchandise that stops working. Wolfpup hit the nail on the head. It's dishonest to bring perfectly fine merchandise back and say you need it replaced.

Think about it like this. If everyone did that, the stores would lose a massive amount of money on the replacement plans. Then, they would stop offering them. And that's bad for the consumer.
 
[quote name='thegamer4787']I've been looking into purchasing a 360 arcade console as of late and could use some advice. I currently own an old (January 2006) xenon model 360 console and have read extensively about the jasper motherboard revision (with the switch to a 65nm GPU). It seems that even the most die-hard jasper hunters are running on pure speculation as to when the new motherboard will hit. My original plan was to simply purchase a jasper console when it hit and sell my old xenon console. However, now I'm not even sure that the jasper 360's will hit before my current 360 is out of warranty (and I definitely don't want to be stuck with an out of warranty 360).

Anyway, long story short, I'm interested in picking up an arcade console (I already own a 120gb hard drive) at a store which offers a replacement plan. Which store currently offers the best replacement plan? When the jasper eventually becomes easy to find, I want to be able to swap my falcon console for a jasper. I've heard of people using Best Buy's replacement plan to switch out 360 hardware in the past, but I've also heard horror stories about their plan. Any tips?[/QUOTE]

I would like to know what store offers the best replacement plan as well? I'm in a similar situation. I have a hard drive and need an arcade unit. I was thinking about best buy, the guy said that they had changed their policy. They no longer just replace them. I know it led to abuse, but I like the ease of it. I also noticed several plans mention they have the right to send you a refurbished unit. I don't like the idea of that. I only like the idea getting my unit fixed or a new one, not someone else's. So are there any places that match the ease of BB's old policy?
 
I guess that I see the point about potentially ruining the plan for those who want broken units fixed. I guess I'll just have to wait until the Jasper hits and hope that my current 360 doesn't die out (which is likely). I wish MS would have just given me an opus console back when I sent my broken Xenon in 3 weeks ago. And just to clarify, bigdaddybruce44, I reiterate that my plan wasn't to go to the store and say that I needed a replacement.
 
Well, that's fine. I understand what you're saying. I wasn't trying to suggest you were going to walk into the store and lie. Still, the whole assumption underlying the protection plan is that it is for merchandise that isn't working. I mean, do you honestly think a company is going to essentially let you pay, for example, $50 and just get a new console for no reason? And what would happen if the employee actually asked you what was wrong? I know that has happened to me. Then, you would have to lie...or walk away with no new console.

Anyway, bigger news....it seems like the NXE is out. A whole bunch of people are getting prompted to update, and there was no word that there were going to be more people let into the preview.

EDIT: Or not. Not everyone over in the thread about the NXE is getting in.
 
Let me start by saying I have a 20gb hard drive that came w/ my system I got in Fall of '06. There is no music on it. Now, I have 2 issues:

1. Upon looking at what I have saved on my HD, the menu says I have 2.9gb free, but after adding up what it says in my memory menu, I am only using about 10.9gb. This clearly does not add up to 20 so can someone please explain what is going on and how I can utilize/access the rest of my storage space. I checked to make sure I had no incomplete or corrupt files and if I did I deleted them. The only thing I can come up with is that it is adding in the amount of room my queued up downloads will take, but that doesn't make much sense and I'm not really buying it.

2. Also while looking at all the garbage I have on my HD I see lots more gamer pics and themes than what comes up when I go to select either a new gamer pic or a new theme (eg the menu to select a new theme only has 10 options, but I believe in the memory menu there was about 25 options)

If anyone can help explain what is going on and how I can utilize all of my 20gb I would greatly appreciate it.
 
The total capacity of the Xbox 360 Hard Drive is either 20 GB, 60 GB, or 120 GB. Of this amount, approximately 6 GB is reserved for system use. Approximately 4 GB of that portion is reserved for game title caching and other hard drive-specific elements in games that support the hard drive, and an additional 2 GB is reserved for use by the Xbox 360 backwards-compatibility software.
 
[quote name='kodos64']Let me start by saying I have a 20gb hard drive that came w/ my system I got in Fall of '06. There is no music on it. Now, I have 2 issues:

1. Upon looking at what I have saved on my HD, the menu says I have 2.9gb free, but after adding up what it says in my memory menu, I am only using about 10.9gb. This clearly does not add up to 20 so can someone please explain what is going on and how I can utilize/access the rest of my storage space. I checked to make sure I had no incomplete or corrupt files and if I did I deleted them. The only thing I can come up with is that it is adding in the amount of room my queued up downloads will take, but that doesn't make much sense and I'm not really buying it.

2. Also while looking at all the garbage I have on my HD I see lots more gamer pics and themes than what comes up when I go to select either a new gamer pic or a new theme (eg the menu to select a new theme only has 10 options, but I believe in the memory menu there was about 25 options)

If anyone can help explain what is going on and how I can utilize all of my 20gb I would greatly appreciate it.[/QUOTE]
Space is allocated toward Xbox Backward Compatibility - that accounts for the remainder.
 
[quote name='yukine']I guess the Best Buy employee who let me exchange my 360 for a Falcon should be fired. :lol:[/quote]

Or least stoned in the back of the store. :applause:

In all honesty, though, I worked at CompUSA for a short time. And believe me, these companies view these protection plans as pure profit. That is why they offer them. Most people do not need to take advantage of them, so that's just money in their pocket all the time. If people actually just continually brought in perfectly fine merchandise, they would be done with such programs. Obviously, that would never happen, but again, I was trying to make the point that these plans are not intended for us to trade in older systems for newer ones.
 
[quote name='bigdaddybruce44']Well, that's fine. I understand what you're saying. I wasn't trying to suggest you were going to walk into the store and lie. Still, the whole assumption underlying the protection plan is that it is for merchandise that isn't working. I mean, do you honestly think a company is going to essentially let you pay, for example, $50 and just get a new console for no reason? And what would happen if the employee actually asked you what was wrong? I know that has happened to me. Then, you would have to lie...or walk away with no new console.

Anyway, bigger news....it seems like the NXE is out. A whole bunch of people are getting prompted to update, and there was no word that there were going to be more people let into the preview.

EDIT: Or not. Not everyone over in the thread about the NXE is getting in.[/QUOTE]

Yeah, I was logged in and it didn't update me.

I'm excited because I've held off playing any 360 games since I heard about the update. It's crazy noise REALLY detracts from my enjoyment, so I've been playing games for other systems 'till the update. So no rush...but geez, I guess just a day or two left! They were probably experimentally rolling it out to a few people ahead of time to make sure nothing goes wrong (or maybe to take some load off their servers).
 
Yeah, it seems that they decided to let in everyone who signed up for the preview/beta. They kept rolling out sets of invites, but still had a bunch of people left. So, as you said, they probably let everyone else in, in order to reduce the stress on the actual launch day.
 
I was thinking today at work about how crazy it is that Orange Box all fits on a single DVD. Then something popped into my head that I never really thought about. How are 360 games on DVD? I mean Blu Ray is the only format that can perform at 1080p, which is true when it comes to movies, but how are 360 DVDs able to do this then? If they were able to make standard DVDs a high def format for games, why didn't they just do the same for movies? Is it a different kind of DVD? Do games take up that much less space than a single film? I'm assuming it's the latter since games with a lot of cut scenes take up more disc space. If anyone can fill me in this curiosity it'd be greatly appreciated.

This in no way a format war question. I have a PS3 as well, and love Blu Ray. I just don't get how these 360 games can look so damn good on DVD, and hold so much information.
 
Most 360 games arent actually 1080p, they are upconverted from a lower amount.

Some 360 games look exactly like the ps3, but some 360 games look beyond awful.. GTA4 being one of them.

No, 360 uses dvd's. Orange box wasn't honestly THAT big of a game.. it had been out on the PC for a longggg time.
 
Optical format does not denote resolution. You have it confused. I can put as much 1080p video as will fit on a CD-R, thumb drive, dvd-r, etc and play it on the 360. Blu-ray is an optical media with enough storage to contain hi-def video/audio in lengths of full movies in its format.

I bought Fighter Pilot: Operation Red Flag on dvd and the first disk had the movie on it like a normal dvd and the second dvd disk had the whole movie in hi-def wmv format.
 
I imagine the answer lies somewhere in the amount of space required to store captured film on disk than the amount of space to store generated computer graphics.

~HotShotX
 
[quote name='Ice2Dragon']Most 360 games arent actually 1080p, they are upconverted from a lower amount.

Some 360 games look exactly like the ps3, but some 360 games look beyond awful.. GTA4 being one of them.

No, 360 uses dvd's. Orange box wasn't honestly THAT big of a game.. it had been out on the PC for a longggg time.[/quote]


Did you just say GTA 4 was bad looking?
 
I was considering upgrading to a 120GB drive, but there are some game saves that I have on my old drive that I really don't want to lose, namely Tecmo saves like DOA4, DOAX2, Ninja Gaiden, Ninja Gaiden Black, Ninja Gaiden 2.

So, what are my options in keeping those saves? Has anyone found a reliable way of keeping them? I've heard that they're tied to your HDD Serial Number in some way.

Is it possible to keep the 20GB around just to have those saves? My impression is that once I use the transfer kit, it transfers everything (giving no choice in the matter) and wipes the 20GB clean. Can I selectively transfer data?

Now, I suppose I could manually transfer everything else over to the 120GB using a memory card, but then I run into the issue of Gamertag and Achievements, right? I lose both?

Any help would be really appreciated. Microsoft's own website is ambiguous at best about how it works exactly.
 
Using the transfer kit moves (as in copy + delete) everything from the 20GB to the 120GB. You don't have any say in the process. You hook up the two drives as MS directs and boot off the included CD. Once it's done, the 120GB has all the info from the 20GB, and the 20GB is blank.

It's pretty much fire and forget.
 
Wait-game saves on the 360 aren't in any way tied to the hardware or login or anything, are they?

And if there are saves you want to still have on the 20GB model, you could just do the transfer and then use a memory card to copy them back...kind of roundabout, but it should work.
 
[quote name='Wolfpup']Wait-game saves on the 360 aren't in any way tied to the hardware or login or anything, are they?

And if there are saves you want to still have on the 20GB model, you could just do the transfer and then use a memory card to copy them back...kind of roundabout, but it should work.[/quote]

Some game saves are, specifically the Tecmo ones like Ninja Gaiden and DOA.

And your second comment is one of my concerns. Will the transfer process automatically move all of my saves or should I do that beforehand? People are making it sound like as soon as the transfer process is over, your 20GB is wiped of all saves... so you can't go back and retrieve them if something goes wrong.
 
[quote name='GuardianE']Some game saves are, specifically the Tecmo ones like Ninja Gaiden and DOA.[/quote]

Oh that really sucks :bomb: Some Wii saves-I think quite a few actually, are like that. Just stupid. I mean DRM on SAVE FILES for crying out loud?!? I wonder if any Playstation 3 games do that too?

And your second comment is one of my concerns. Will the transfer process automatically move all of my saves or should I do that beforehand? People are making it sound like as soon as the transfer process is over, your 20GB is wiped of all saves... so you can't go back and retrieve them if something goes wrong.
Click to expand...

Oh, I see what you mean, like if for some reason they don't get copied right? Yeah, it TOTALLY wipes the 20GB drive and everything ends up on the 120GB drive. I've never heard of the process going wrong, but you could buy a 512MB memory card ahead of time, copy saves that are important to it, and THEN do the transfer to be extra safe.
 
Does it wipe out anything on the 120gb? I just got one of the 120s on clearance and haven't gotten around to even seeing if there is anything on it... but if there are any demos/games/etc I'd want to explore, should I do that before transferring?

Also, hope this isn't too much of a newb question, but what is the best way to get 2 360s working off the same Live account? Since I now have a spare 20GB HD (once I get my 120 set up) I'm really tempted to try to get a deal on a cheap Arcade unit and use my old HD (figuring I can also use it to stream videos/etc over the network, and I'd probably end up playing games on it)... but I know I can't have the Live account on more than one machine, is the best way to just put it on a memory card and move it with me to whichever 360 I'm on? would I be able to redownload the XBLA games to a 2nd unit, and still play them, as long as I'm signed into Live? (so I could have all of my XBLA games on either machine, and just play them on whichever machine has the memory card with my Live account?)

(and while I am asking questions, I always hear the Xbox transfer cable only works one time-- does the cable physically "break" or something? (like a blown fuse) Or do people just mean you only get 1 shot at transferring any given HD? [I guess what I am asking is if I were to get another Xbox, use my 20GB drive, then decide I wanted another 120gb, would I need another brand new transfer cable?)
 
My understanding is durning the process it may add some demos and stuff to the 120GB drive, so I'd assume you're not losing anything that might have been on there.

And yeah, sounds like you'd want to put your profile on a memory card and move it back and forth, and make sure one of the 360s has internet access for downloaded stuff.

And no, you wouldn't need a new cable, it's presumably the drive-though I'd assume you could copy things again from the 20GB drive to a new 120GB...or maybe you can do it as often as you want, but it's always one direction from 20->120? I don't know...it's all kind of weird.
 
I've got a boatload of GS credit and I'm thinking of picking up a 360 refurbed from GS. $169 for a core with wireless controller seems like a decent deal (is it?). My question is: is the likelihood of a failure any more or less great with a refurbed unit? Is $169 a good deal for a core with a wireless controller? I have enough to buy a new 60 gig unit but then I have no money left for Live or games. I don't want to spend any "real" money on this deal so I want to stay below $300 in GS credit. What do you think?
 
I think you know the answer to your question. If you were a CAG, and your 360 was intermittently heating up, and almost dying, where would you go to trade it in?
It so happens, that this will be the system you are about to buy. If there's any system out there that I would never buy used/refurbished, it would be a 360.
 
[quote name='dragonjud']I think you know the answer to your question. If you were a CAG, and your 360 was intermittently heating up, and almost dying, where would you go to trade it in?
It so happens, that this will be the system you are about to buy. If there's any system out there that I would never buy used/refurbished, it would be a 360.[/QUOTE]
Good point. :)

I just did a bit more research and I realized that I was misinformed about the Arcade bundle - it has a wireless controller now (didn't the core used to have a wired controller?) At any rate $199 is doable. I could get a cheap HD from that xboxstorageupgrade site. Of course, CC is selling an Arcade + wireless controller + 20 gig HD for $199 on Friday. Grrr. Too bad GS' black friday is seeming awful.
 
[quote name='torifile']Good point. :)

I just did a bit more research and I realized that I was misinformed about the Arcade bundle - it has a wireless controller now (didn't the core used to have a wired controller?) At any rate $199 is doable. I could get a cheap HD from that xboxstorageupgrade site. Of course, CC is selling an Arcade + wireless controller + 20 gig HD for $199 on Friday. Grrr. Too bad GS' black friday is seeming awful.[/quote]

I would definately pony up the 30 bucks to get a new arcade over the used one from gamestop...also, that cc black friday deal is killer, if I had the funds to drop on another 360, I'd get that one.
 
I have the funds but I promised my wife I wouldn't spend any more real money on games (just bought a Samsung LCD to play on). :lol: I wonder if someone wants to trade store credits... I'll hit the trade forum and try my luck.
 
[quote name='torifile']I have the funds but I promised my wife I wouldn't spend any more real money on games (just bought a Samsung LCD to play on). :lol: I wonder if someone wants to trade store credits... I'll hit the trade forum and try my luck.[/QUOTE]
Spend the $150 in GS credit on a DS and sell it - you'll convert credit to cash and still get your 360 using GS credit.
 
[quote name='JJSP']Spend the $150 in GS credit on a DS and sell it - you'll convert credit to cash and still get your 360 using GS credit.[/QUOTE]
That's an idea. Will I be able to get that much for a DS?
 
Buying a used system regardless of who makes it is not as good an idea as buying a new one with a warranty. Sure, you might save cash on a used system, but too many people unload POS systems at gamestores for my tastes. Unless the system is no longer manufactured, its worth the peace of mind and extra cost to get a new one.
 
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