Well now, with the 360 hitting the 199USD price tag allot of people are getting one. What more could you want? You get a gaming console and a digital download service... One small catch, you only get 512MB. Now I know Harddrives are expensive to put in consoles. And they are the first thing to get axed in a console. But I do believe that they should have thought this out a little more. An average SD movie is 700MB, 188MB over what MS offers people. Now lets jump back abit to E308. MS said that Blu Ray is going to fall soon to digital downloads And I do think that Blu-Ray will fall to downloads, but there are two major problems that they are facing right now.
1. HDD cost. They are pricey and too small to have an entire format
based around them. 3gigs per movie, meaning you can only have 20 movies
untill you hit 60gigs. Upgrading is always possable. But a disk is
still better for now.
2. ISP caps. This is the most harmfull thing to digital downloads right
now. All ISP's are putting caps that range anywere from 50gig - 250gigs
a month, for all things internet based in you house. Which is really
going to make people lean towards a disk.
Now for the movies side of things, with the HD era on the rise more
then ever right now, and movies in 720p taking up about 2-4gigs, will
MS hit themselves a little harder then they thought? Yes, they can win
more people over with the price cut, but it is a double edged sword.
Will this hurt digital downloads and give Blu-Ray the edge or will the
unknowing casual market buy one without knowning that they can't hold
the movies? It is true that digital downloads will infact take down
disk based formats. But not for a while.
Onward to gaming, Microsoft is pushing online day after day. Every chance they get they make an online move. GTAIV DLC, Fallout 3 DLC. Rock Band 2, which I would like to go into right now.
I walked by the TV the other day and saw the Rock Band 2 TV spot. And the line at the end of it confused me. "360 now starting at 199" now most people who dont keep up with gaming would say "Whats wrong with that advertising?" To those who do know what I am getting at. Downloadable Content, and for a game like RB2 that is a major selling point. Here is something from the PlayStation Blog
"File sizes: 22.4 MB - 52.1 MB (singles), 101 MB - 253 MB (track packs)"
22.4 MB through 52.1MB for singles. Now with 512MB you are not going to get allot of stuff on there, and since this game gets weekly DLC, you do the math.
Warhawk Omega Dawn was 143MB, Now that was one map, a vehicle and a few layouts for the map. Not that much really. Fallout 3 is wanting to do something big and amazing for the DLC. No horse armor this time... How big would that be? Well lets look back for a second at the teams work, Shivering Isles (Oblivion) was 1.1gigs. Which is twice the size of the Arcade.
Will the Arcade leave Microsoft in a problem later on? It will boost sales for now, but what will be the long term effects that is going to happen? Will It have to be faded out? I just don't see how you can lead the digital download frontier without a harddrive.
Now, before any Sony or Microsoft fanboys come in here to bash / mindlessly agree, I am not slamming the 360. I am just baffled at this movement MS has made. This is not a slam towards anyone.
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The Arcade 360 sku has ALWAYS been for one of the following categories of gaming consumers.
-People who don't have broadband internet, or no internet period.
-Parents that don't want their children playing online.
-People that have no desire to play online.
The Arcade is perfect for these folks. And there isn't any hardware that they are paying for that they don't need (unlike the ps3, which is jam packed with useless hardware adding to the cost).
Also if someone wanted a cheap HDD, you can get a used one pretty cheap.
http://video-games.shop.eba...
In truth I could not see having an offline gaming system without a HDD. What if the kid or person wants to use custom music? 512MB is not enough to store it.
It is true that was the purpose of the Arcade model. But now they are advertising it with a game that focuses on its DLC (Rock Band 2)
And btw, I have yet to find a useless piece of hardware on my PS3. I use all the functions. Cept HDMI (No HDTV)
Well that's the whole point of the Starting off at 199. Just like car ads have that starting off at ....
It's just the bare bones kit but if you want the extra stuff that's, well extra. I get what you are saying but in the end it really is just marketing like every other company does. I think Sony even shows the price of the cheapest version of the PS3.
...those who buy the arcade and later want a hard drive will probably just go out and buy the hard drive add-on. Even though it would be cheaper for them to just buy a more expensive xbox SKU initially, some people (especially those who are not avid gamers, or those who don't do their research first) will not think of that before hand.
I went for the $399 Elite this month and am disapointed to find it still lacks many of the features my PS3 came standard with. Things like Wifi capability and a rechargeable controller (battery and cable). I am sure MS is fine with this though, because they just get to make more money selling those things to me.
I'm holding out on slapping down $100 for the wireless adaptor though. That's just way too much to ask for it IMO.
I wish I had $5 for every time that someone said that digital downloads will eliminate hard copies of anything. Isn't that what they said about newspaper when the internet became widely avaible?
I don't know about you but I am never going to buy into DD's as there are too many uncertainties related to it. When I buy a DVD I know that it will work because all I have to is put it into my player and turn it on. With DD's I have to make sure that I have enough memory, enough bandwidth, the capability of keeping my system on while the movie dl'ing plus I have to worry about the connection failing while the movie is dl'ing.
Please stop talking about DD's as the future as we all know that it will never happen.
P.S. - Please tell of any other time in history where someone will give up the right to have a secure hard copy of a product in exchange for a digital copy. Because the only thing I can think of is credit cards and look how secure those things are.