5 Reasons to Buy the Xbox 360 Pro, Not the Elite

As expected, Microsoft finally revealed that it will cut the price of the Xbox 360 Elite tomorrow from $400 to $300.

And as expected, the mid-range Xbox 360 Pro will be discontinued, but it will be sold for just $250 while supplies last. If you have any desire to buy Microsoft’s game console, you should jump on that deal right now. Don’t even think about buying the Elite instead. Here’s why:

The Pro includes an HD cable: In announcing the Elite’s price cut, Microsoft conveniently forgot to mention that it also scratched high definition cables from the package (you can see the omission in official photos). While the Elite used to include an HDMI cable, and the Pro included Component HD cables, the new Elite comes with AV cables only.

The Pro might score you a free controller: Engadget reportedly spotted a Target ad for Sunday, August 30, that says you get a free Xbox 360 controller when you purchase the Pro model. That’s a $50 value, and you’ll definitely want two controllers unless you only play video games alone. I’d wait for the weekend to see if this get confirmed, though.

You don’t need the Elite’s 120 GB hard drive: The console’s streaming media capabilities (through a networked PC, or through Netflix) practically eliminate the need to store music and movies on the hard drive. That leaves saved game files, which are quite small, and downloaded games. The largest Xbox Live Arcade download to date, Shadow Complex, is 835 MB, so you’re unlikely to fill a 60 GB hard drive any time soon. I have the old 20 GB Xbox 360, and I’ve filled about half of it.

Black is so Sony: Your preference may vary, but I think the Elite’s black casing is a little too hardcore, especially for a console that’ll soon be trying to reach out to the casual crowd. I don’t hear anything about Microsoft offering a white Xbox 360 Elite, which means the white casing is only available in the nearly-useless Xbox 360 Arcade.

You need the extra money for games: If you take the $300 Xbox 360 Elite, throw in a component cable ($40) and a wireless controller ($50), you’re practically back at the Elite’s old price point. Add a game or two and the bill exceeds $500. Save yourself the $140 on the Pro and go buy a few games so you can actually play the console when you get home.

Bungie: Halo: Reach Will "Probably Be Our Biggest Game Ever"

September 11, 2009 | 12:14 PM PST

With the release of Halo 3: ODST only a short time away, that has where most of the series' focus seems to have been recently. However, E3 saw the announcement of another Halo title from Bungie, subtitled "Reach." And according to the studio's Community Manager, Brian Jarrard, it could very well be their biggest game to date.

"Reach is going to be a tough project for us to wrap just because the scope is really big -- it's up there," he told G4TV.com. "It'll probably be our biggest game ever just in terms of the amount of people working on it and the expectations for it. I mean, it's a big deal for us."

G4TV.com's Patrick Klepek notes that they were under the impression that it would be a smaller spin-off not unlike ODST, but are now convinced by Jarrard's words that nothing could be further from the truth, "much bigger than I'd ever imagined."

"I know just for at least the next year our hardcore focus is going to be on getting Reach done and awesome and hopefully getting people excited about it," Jarrard said.

It is noted that while, as the title implies, ODST is built upon the Halo 3 engine, Reach is going to be a from-the-ground-up new experience, representing a major step forward in engine technology and a complete reinvention.

"Reach will be a full three-year cycle -- it's got all-new tech, akin to the change from Halo 2 to Halo 3," Jarrard said.

More of the interview with Jarrard from the Penny Arcade Expo can be found here, and it covers ODST, Reach, what might come after Reach, and Halo in general.

System software

The Xbox runs a custom operating system which was once believed to be a modified version of the Windows 2000 kernel.^[17] It exposes APIs similar to APIs found in Microsoft Windows, such as DirectX 8.1.

Sandy Duncan, former VP of Xbox in Europe, however states that "the [Xbox] Kernel was based on Windows NT...but that was about 150K of code....". ^[18] The system software may have been based on the Windows NT architecture that powered Windows 2000, it is not a modified, or heavily version of either.

The user interface for the Xbox is called the Xbox Dashboard. It features a media player that can be used to play music CDs, rip CDs to the Xbox's built-in hard drive and play music that has been ripped to the hard drive; let users manage game saves, music and downloaded content from Xbox LIVE; and lets Xbox LIVE users sign in and manage their account. the dashboard is only available when the user is not watching a movie or playing a game. It uses many shades of green and black for the user interface, to be consistent with the physical Xbox color scheme. When the Xbox was released in 2001 the LIVE service was not online yet, so the dashboard's LIVE feature was unusable.

Xbox LIVE was released in 2002, but in order to access it users had to buy the Xbox LIVE starter kit containing a headset, a subscription, and supplemental. While the Xbox was still being supported by Microsoft, the Xbox Dashboard was updated via Xbox LIVE several times to reduce cheating and add features.

Accessories

The original Duke controller (left) and the Controller S (right).

The Xbox controller features two analog sticks, a pressure sensitive directional pad, two analog triggers, a Back button, a Start button, two accessory slots and six 8-bit analog action buttons (A/Green, B/Red, X/Blue, Y/Yellow, and Black and White buttons.)^[11] The standard Xbox controller (also known as the "Duke" controller) was originally the Xbox controller for all territories except Japan. The Duke controller has been criticized for being bulky compared to other video game controllers (it was awarded "Blunder of the Year" by Game Informer in 2001^[12] and a Guinness World Record for the biggest controller in Guinness World Records Gamer's Edition 2008, as well as being ranked the second worst video game controller ever by IGN editor Craig Harris.^[13]). The Controller S, a smaller, lighter Xbox controller, was originally the standard Xbox controller only in Japan (codenamed "Akebono"),^[14] designed for users with smaller hands.^[15][16]

Xbox DVD Remote

The Controller S was released in other territories by popular demand, and eventually replaced the standard controller in the Xbox's retail package, with the larger original controller available as an accessory. An 8 MB removable solid state memory card can be plugged into the controllers, onto which game saves can either be copied from the hard drive when in the Xbox dashboard's memory manager or saved during a game. Most Xbox games can be copied to the memory unit and to another console but some Xbox saves are digitally signed, each console has a unique signing key, and some games (e.g., Ninja Gaiden and Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball) will not load saved games signed by a different Xbox, limiting the utility of the memory card. Some game saves can be tagged as uncopyable or simply padded to over 8 MB (Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic). The signing mechanism has been reverse-engineered by the Xbox hacking community, who have developed tools to modify savegames to work in a different console, though the signing key of the recipient Xbox (the "HDkey"), and the ramped-up title key of the game (the "authkey"),must be known. It is also possible to save an Xbox Live account on a memory unit, to simplify its use on more than one Xbox. The Xbox includes a standard AV cable which provides composite video and monaural or stereo audio to TVs equipped with RCA inputs. European Xbox's also included an RCA jack to SCART converter block as well as the standard AV cable.

Hardware

The Xbox was the first major console to incorporate a hard disk drive, used primarily for storing game saves compressed in ZIP archives and content downloaded from Xbox Live. This eliminated the need for separate memory cards (although some older consoles, such as the TurboGrafx-CD, Sega CD and Sega Saturn had featured built-in battery backup memory prior to 2007). An Xbox user could rip music from standard audio CDs to the hard drive, and these songs were used for the custom soundtracks in some games.^[7]

The Xbox was the first gaming product to feature Dolby Interactive Content-Encoding Technology, which allows real-time Dolby Digital encoding in game consoles. Previous game consoles could only use Dolby Digital 5.1 during non-interactive "cut scene" playback.^[8]

The Xbox is based on commodity PC hardware and is much larger and heavier than its contemporaries. This is largely due to a bulky tray-loading DVD-ROM drive and the standard-size 3.5 inch hard drive. The Xbox has also pioneered safety features, such as breakaway cables for the controllers to prevent the console from being pulled from the surface it rests on.

Several internal hardware revisions have been made in an ongoing battle to discourage modding (hackers continually updated modchip designs in an attempt to defeat them), to cut manufacturing costs, and to make the DVD-ROM drive more reliable (some of the early units' drives gave Disc Reading Errors due to the unreliable Thomson DVD-ROM drives used). Later generation units that used the Thomson TGM-600 DVD-ROM drives and the Philips VAD6011 DVD-ROM drives were still vulnerable to failure that rendered the consoles either unable to read newer discs or caused them to halt the console with an error code usually indicating a PIO/DMA identification failure, respectively. These units were not covered under the extended warranty.

In 2002 Microsoft and Nvidia entered arbitration over a dispute on the pricing of Nvidia's chips for the Xbox.^[9] Nvidia's filing with the SEC indicated that Microsoft was seeking a US$13 million discount on shipments for NVIDIA's fiscal year 2002. Microsoft alleged violations of the agreement the two companies entered, sought reduced chipset pricing, and sought to ensure that Nvidia fulfill Microsoft's chipset orders without limits on quantity. The matter was privately settled on February 6, 2003.^[10]

Launch-era Xbox gaming units were made in Hungary and the controllers made mostly in Indonesia.

Specification of Xbox game

Here's you need to know about Xbox game.

Manufacturer	Microsoft
Product family	Xbox
Type	Video game console
Generation	Sixth generation
Retail availability	NA November 15, 2001 JP February 22, 2002 PAL March 14, 2002
Discontinued	JP 2005 NA 2006 EU 2006
Units sold	24 million (as of May 10, 2006)[1]
Media	DVD, CD
Operating system	Custom (Based on Windows NT architecture and Windows XP (through Xbox LIVE))
CPU	Custom 733 MHz Intel Coppermine-based processor
Storage capacity	8 or 10 GB internal HDD (both formatted to 8 GB), 8 MB memory card
Memory	64 MB DDR SDRAM at 200 MHz
Graphics	233 MHz nVidia NV2A
Controller input	4 maximum (wired)
Connectivity	100Mbit Ethernet
Online services	Xbox Live
Best-selling game	Halo 2, 8 million (as of May 9, 2006)[2][3]
Successor	Xbox 360