Is an xbox 360 worth purchasing?

[illuminatirex]

Hi, I have always been a PC gamer, and currently have a rather high end system (quad core, 4 gb ram, and a good gpu), and i was wondering if a 360 console would be worth purchasing.

To be honest I have noticed more downsides of it, such as:
- paid multiplayer (the yearly cards)
- i heard many bad things about the overheating issues.
- quite expensive games
-it looks to be redundant to what my pc offers.
- i bought a 360 controller and playd couple pc games, 3rd person perspective ones play well, shooters....cant beat a mouse/keyboard.

Good....

- most ppl that i know are hyped about modern warfare 2, and are ready to get "office matches going"
- ...netflix? (which are really also streamable on the pc)

I heard good things about the 360 from my colleges at work, but to be honest their "mentality", and lack of pc gaming knowledge does put me off a bit, since they state the 360 has better graphics...and i did go threw many game comparison screanshots...and I could not agree.

If i would get it i planned to connect it to a 1680x1050 resolution 22inch monitor (the one that i use for the pc)

and i think the total would cost me about 450ish (elite 360 + yearly online fee + vga cable adapter + modern warfare 2 game....(since there is no game bundled with the 360...or atleast games worth playing)

Would appreciate any response.

 

[davedurg09]

I take it you mean dollars ?, if so or even not get the modern warfare edition of the console, you get a custom sprayed edition of the console, 2 black controllers, a copy of MW2 and a 250gb harddrive which is only available with the special edition console(although i think there is a another special edition console coming out with the 250gb harddirve some racing game cant remember the name).

400 dollars it costs i believe and i read somewhere that microsoft is temporarly offering a 50 dollar rebate or something so 350 with that.

Get your Year subscription off ebay as i think it is the cheapest off there, well it is in the UK anyway at least £12 to £17 cheaper (25 to 35 dollars cheaper). also they email the codes straight to you so you dont have to wait for it in the post.

if you live in the UK its £250 and you can pre-order on Game's website.

Then all you need is the VGA cable which are cheap enough

 

[illuminatirex]

Hi, yes sorry i meant it in dollars. I was not thinking about getting the mw2 edition, but i just summed it up as in +$60 for the mw2 game alone in addition of a base console + setup cost.

so its $250 ( $300-$50 rebate) + about $40 (approximately for the yearly online plan) + around $40 for the VGA cable + $60 for mw2 ...total = $390 for the console and the game....

I'm just trying to figure out if the entire purchase would be worth it(considering the fact that I do already have a rather high end PC)

 

[davedurg09]

Wll if your are talking in terms of reasons for buying the console, here are some that i think make it a good choice.

1. I have Call Of Duty 4 and 5 for the xbox and love playing them, ive played COD 4 on a high end pc and didnt enjoy it because I found it to really chaotic sometimes as the pc version supports like 64 or something I think (xbox = 16) which is just crazy for the size of some of the maps. dont get me wrong i am a pc gamer first and xbox gamer second, you are right in saying you can beat a pc for FPS games due to mouse accuracy etc but does accuracy really matter when u have like 40 to 50 grenades being randomly thrown into the air and falling onto your head from everywhere. Playing them on the 360 makes them alot better i think and more skill is required to play

And a controller is really better for most other games types (I.E Third person shooters, football, soccer, fighting, racing, the list goes on.), and i think the layout and feel of the 360 controller in your hand is perfect

2.Xbox 360 is not just a gaming machine, its also a media centre, you can take it to any room in your house and hook and external hardrive or usb pen drive or connect to a network wired or wireless and play music, video and look at pictures all in High Definition provided your content is in HD (for full effect), you can also rent movies and music videos to your xbox and netflix is coming soon, this means no more going to movies store. you can do all this with a pc also but it is more work moving/disconnecting a pc as you probably already no lol.

3. communication - the xbox headset provided makes it really easy for taking to friends online and sending them msg's if they are offline, you can start and join parties within a matter of seconds which connects you to your friends instantly and you can even join there session whichs takes you right into the server they are in, no need to load ventrilo or ts and then find there channel and then try and get the server name or ip so you can manually connect.

4. there is also a new games on demand where you can download full games to your 360 harddrive.

5.Game updates - on the 360 these are usually small and download instantly and the xbox tells you when you need one, no more need to find the latest version you need for your pc game and then spend hours looking for a website that has a hign enough bandwidth so u can get it fast.

6. even playing field - when you play online on the 360 everyone is using the same xbox controller and so you are equal to everyone else(except the losers that buy modded controllers) where as on the pc you could be up against people who spend hundreds of dollars on top of the range keyboard and mice and so they are more accurate than you and this puts you at a disadvantage.

Im sure there are more reasons but i cant think of them at the minute lol.

 

[ulysses35]

Being a console and PC gamer I must confess the attraction of simply chucking a disc in the console and playing right away with minimal effort is great.

I love the ease of being able to turn and and connect to online party games almost instantly.

Downsides..... play COD4 / COD5 on a console then play it on a high spec PC and the visuals are not as good on the console.

 

[purplerat]

I've been very tempted to buy one since the price drop and news of upcoming rebate. But every time I really think about and start adding up all the extras it gets really expensive really fast. I think what it's going to come down to for me is the availability and cost of pre-owned/older 360 titles. I don't want to shell out hundreds of dollars just to play a couple of exclusives and I'm certainly not going to pay extra for new releases that are also available on the PC. Time to starting shopping around I guess.

 

[ulysses35]

True.... Console games are more expensive that the same title on a PC - not sure why... just the way it is

 

[purplerat]

True.... Console games are more expensive that the same title on a PC - not sure why... just the way it is

Licensing. Any joe-schmo can create and put a PC game if they want. But in order to put out a XBox or PS title you have to pay MS or Sony. I'm not completely sure how the payment scheme works, if it's a one time licensing fee per title or if MS/Sony gets a dollar amount per unit sold, but you're essentially paying both the people who created the game along with those who created the hardware it's played on every time you buy a game. There are a few other reasons for the price difference, but I think that's the biggest one.

 

[illuminatirex]

Thank You all for the reply's

To be honest the more and more i think about buying the 360/ do more research, the less I want to get it...that is...let me explain....and as a small reply to Davedurg09's post.....

1. I never really played a single game on a 360(not counting the 360's set up in stores)
but the lack of accuracy (I only base this on playing couple "direct" ports to pc, such as mirror's edge, street fighter, the batman demo, and other games that fully support a controller)
for instance in mirrors edge, even walking a straight line and turning, or just fluid moving was a bit challenging for me on the controller, and with KB/M it was very natural for me and i could perform some nice stunts.

2.as to a media machine...i do own a Phillips DVD player that allows me to plug in a flash drive/external hdd to it to watch movies via it. As to net flix.....i can always stream the same content to a PC (granted it wont have that cover art...but i don't really care about that sort of menu, I'm more into content than its presentation (which is important, but not in this case...at least for me, when it comes to this purchase)...and also I can always hook up my pc to a tv...if a need arises...but usually i watch movies on the pc anyways...got a tv tuner, so as of late i don't really sit in the living room and watch tv that much, since i like browsing the web, and doing other things while having a tv view on the side.

3 & 4 & 5. . I don't really care about "communication that much"..I have been using steam for a long time and had a headset for about 2 years now...never used it for any online game..surprisingly ....to be honest i hate talking with others while playing, I'm a fast "typer", so i usually team chat/type, to the point that ppl ask me how can i be as good as i am in game, and still type most of the time. So having a mike is stil redundant, and somewhat counter apealing to me.

Games on demand...I use steam if i need to...but I always enjoyed purchasing a boxed product rather than a digital download, even if it was slightly more costly.

Game updates...Steam, easy painless, relatively fast, and no cd's/dvds needed.

6. I dont think having a better KB/M would help ppl that much, I have on an older keayborad and a MX 700 mouse, and usually in all FPS's im in the top 5 if not top 3.
And i got so used to the MB/M for FPS's that I was considering getting one of those devices that allow you to use the KB/M on the consoles....since i would probably get 1 kill out of 20 of my deaths lol

Personally i have a feeling that the 360 + its online payd plan is more like renting an item, than owning it like a pc...sicne it feels so restrictive.....

I dont mean to be so negative, but somehow I notice more negatives than positives.....and cant seem to justify a purchase....and think in terms like"for that $450..i could get a beter motherboard and a faster quad"..i know its silly but old habits die hard

 

[daship]

Well 360s are easy to flash the DvD drive firmware, so you can play your backups.

 

[spacegiraffe]

Edit: Sorry didn't realise this was posted so long ago and didn't realise this was a forum until I signed up, I thought I could submit anonymously before I wrote the post... I found this thread from google search, sorry about bumping such an old thread :/


@ Davedurg09

1. In PC version of COD 4 and 5 there are dedicated servers which allow you to actually choose which specific server you want to join, host servers and mod/create gametypes. Essentially you're annoyed because you joined a 64 slot server when it's not hard to filter the max players and join a server with max players of only 16. On the PC version you can mod, and I don't mean mod as in how people mod consoles as in PC land that'd be called hacking. Modding is essentially editing game files so that people who host servers can run new gametypes, add new models/textures/scripts to their server and for players to add weapon skins and other mods to make the game more personalized. Now modding is 100% legal, hacking is not and PC being easier to add new mods to is also far easier and cheaper to hack compared to the console. On the PC you will occasionally go up against a hacker, probably once a couple weeks if you play about 4 hours a day. Unlike on console games though hackers can be banned by server admins almost immediately, so long as you stick to highly populated servers there will be an admin on about half the time so even when the rare incident of someone hacking occurs they can be banned immediately. There is one exception to that of course which is rank hacking and aim boting. Some people get away with aim boting because there is some aim bot software which is very hard to detect visually and only make their 30 kill streak questionable. Im pretty sure noone really cares too much for rank hackers but it doesn't ruin the game unless you're a hardcore gamer with no life.

I do agree though that the controller is better for Third Person Shooters, sport, racing and such games but that's only because I grew up playing console so i'm used to playing those kinds of games on a console instead of a PC. I have only been gaming on PC for about a year now and it wasn't until a month into using it that I realized how superior it is compared to console gaming.

2. The computer is also a media centre, it's far more of a media centre than any console. For example you may say you can watch DVDs on your Xbox. Well I can get a DVD blue-ray writer/reader combo for about $300AUD. For just a plain DVD drive at the same technological level as the xbox it'd cost me about $50AUD. You can also stream movies/music/games on your computer at a much higher level than you can compared to console. Console you can also do this but you are very limited, you've only got Netflix for movies which the Australian version is still in development so us Aussies don't even got that yet. Music you must put onto your console which is a pain for people with >50GB of music or anyone with a decent movie collection as it takes forever for the shitty Xbox Hard drives to copy it all over and it takes up 50GB of your 250GB drive which you bought for over a hundred dollars! PC you can get a 7200RPM 1TB hard drive for as little as $80AUD. Not only is that much faster than the Xbox hard drive but it's far cheaper too! Also computers are upgradable so new technology like SSD which are about 20x faster than a 7200RPM drive can be put in your PC if your motherboard can support it.

Computer has High Definition if you didn't realise, you can actually hook your PC up to a 62" LCD Screen so long as it has a HDMI port and your GPU in your PC has one. Almost every new GPU has a HDMI port so as long as your PC ain't a piece of crap you can hook it up to your TV and play PC games in HD on there, also you have to option to play HD games just on a 22" monitor which seems far larger than a 62" screen when you're only about 20cm back from it.

There's less work in getting movies on your PC than on xbox, well probably around the same amount of work but if you think about it on PC you can download movie torrents which are free and incredibly easy to find. Not saying you should but it's much, much easier to download a torrent than sign up to a service, put your credit card information in and then searching through the pages of movies you want to watch. Essentially downloading a torrent is the same but instead it's just install bit torrent/limewire download the torrent then enjoy... Now i'm not saying anyone should go do this even though I do support piracy I understand it's illegal. The point of that example is that PC has far more options when it comes to downloading anything virtual. It's far easier, far cheaper and far more expansive I don't know how anyone can believe PC is beaten by the console in this way.

3. Outlook, Hotmail, MSN, AOL, Facebook, Myspace, Steam chat, Team speak, Ventrillo, Skype are all but a few applications/services you can use to communicate with others on the PC. Ventrillo, Skype, Steam chat and Team speak can all be used for both text chatting and voice chatting with friends/fellow gamers. Facebook and Myspace are social networking sites and are more about expressing your personality on your profile and chatting/commenting. AOL and MSN are examples of messenger applications which can be used to chat with friends in text, video and voice chat. Skype is also an example of a messenger application but since it's used mainly for voice chatting I grouped it with Ventrillo and Team Speak. Outlook and hotmail are email applications/services which allow you to send people messages while they are offline. Many Messenger applications allow you to leave offline messages as well.

Though you could argue that these applications/services are more difficult to use, there is a larger range of these services, the degree of difficulty to use applications like TS or Ventrillo isn't much more than the difficulty of using the xbox parties/friends service. In xbox you still have to add friends which is the same as most of these services, you only need to add friends to be able to talk to them. The applications where you need IP addresses to join chat servers are just the same but instead of adding friends you add an IP address and Port Number. Xbox live chat is essentially the same as steam chat where you can create parties, chat with anyone on your friends list, call them, chat to people ingame and such but you're using a keyboard so it's easier to type and if you use a mic you can buy headsets from anywhere between $5-$1000 so you have a much larger range compared to Xbox and far better quality headsets.

4. There are tens of thousands of websites which allow you to do the exact same thing but usually allow you to choose between a much larger range of games and for much cheaper. For example GTA costs about $50AUD on xbox, on PC it costs about $30AUD and usually goes on sale down to $10-$20 on many websites.

5. Steam auto updates to latest version of your game and most games on their own have an option to do this. Also it doesn't take hours to find a website where you can download the patch from. It probably takes me 2-3 minutes at most and the patches are usually only 10-20mb so it takes about 10 seconds for me to download if it's from an Australia webserver and up to a minute if it's from an American one. The PC is far superior to Console in this way as many console games don't get updated regularly eg: Team Fortress 2

I already mentioned mods but you gtta remember that on PC modding is supported, on xbox it is not which limits a very large amount of custom content to xbox users.

6. Keyboards don't really matter too much. Reason people buy good keyboards is because they look cool, are more reliable and have programmable macro keys. This doesn't leave many people at a disadvantage though as macro keys just make it more convenient for them to initiate commands and such. More expensive mice do alter game play but it doesn't matter too much. The difference between say a $10 mouse and a $50 mouse is a lot but it really only helps accuracy. When you buy say a $100 mouse, compared to the $50 mouse you're essentially buying tiny extras like programmable buttons on the side of the mouse, more stylish hull, higher DPI. So long as your mouse has a DPI of 800 you're at no real disadvantage compared to everyone else. The programmable buttons I use for like RP gametypes of garrysmod, to quickly switch weapons in TF2 and to plant the bomb in CSS. Yer it saves me half a second compared to doing it normally but it really doesn't help much. So unless your mouse visibly lags or has a low DPI the quality of your mouse really doesn't give you an advantage/disadvantage, instead it's more likely you're just terrible at a certain game so you blame your mouse.


Oh and yer there are a couple advantages for xbox like how it's far cheaper than a computer and how it's slightly easier to setup but if you're a gamer or play for more than an hour a week something like that really shouldn't matter to you. Yer $250 for an xbox console compared to $800 for a decent gaming computer, you're saving a lot of money if you don't actually own a computer. Games are MUCH cheaper on PC and xbox accessories cost a shitload and are as good quality wise as hong kong Rolex being sold for 20 bucks! So essentially unless you don't already own a computer and plan to only ever buy/play one game on it for the next 3-4 years then a computer does end up being cheaper when you add up the cost of everything.

 

[jaguarskx]

There are a couple of things you should be aware of, just in case...

1. If you move outside of the country where you purchased your XBox 360 from (job relocation, got an international girlfriend, running from the law, etc..), then you will not be able keep your Xbox 360 Live account active.

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/104884-13-killed-live-account-moved-country

2. If you in any way, shape or form hack your Xbox 360, then Microsoft will kill your Live account by black listing the MAC address associated with the Xbox 360 you have purchased.


Have a nice day...