Anatomy of an Xbox

Time to get over the noise and into some of the little details I liked. First of all, the controller. It fits my hand much better than the original Xbox controller, looks good and is wireless. You can power on and off the console with it too, which is very handy. It has a huge Xbox logo in the middle, which doubles as a button to access Xbox dashboard or to power on the console. Around this logo is a status light that tells you the controller sync status and controller number, from 1 to 4.

The next thing I liked may sound a bit odd, but Xbox 360 Premium ships with the best AV-cable I’ve ever seen in a console. Not only does it have component video connectors for HD, but the same cable also offers SD via composite for those with no component in their TV or display. The attention to detail in the cable shows in the simple switch you can use to alternate between HD and SD output. Xbox detects the right signal from the cable.

Optical cable isn’t included, but since the AV-cable even has optical output, you can just plug one in. Let’s hear one more for the cables: network cable is included and it’s long enough for most people.

The hard drive is an external 20 gb one, located on the top of the system. This is the only visible thing setting the core and premium versions apart. Core version just has the empty drive bay. Due to the external design, if there’s a drive failure, you can ship just the drive back and keep the console, still being able to play games. Makes the wait for repair more tolerable. This goes the other way around too, if your console is defective, you can keep the hard drive with your saves and settings and stick them to a new console, if necessary.

Having only 20 Gb of space is a not something to brag about. While this is twice as much as the original Xbox had, by today’s standards it is not much. It’s not helping either, that 8 Gb is in use (around 2Gb for pre-installed games and videos) already when you start using the console, leaving around 10 Gb for users. This isn’t very much, especially if you’re a keen downloader of game demos, which usually take around 1 Gb per game.

Since it’s a 2,5″ drive (form factor in notebook computers), it means the speed doesn’t compare with the 3,5″ drives used in desktops. For games this doesn’t matter, though. It’s fast enough. In addition to being small and not very power hungry, 2,5″ drives are also bit more expensive and don’t offer the same capacity as their 3,5″ counterparts do.
I believe cost was one of the main reasons Xbox 360 has only a 20 Gb drive while current drives can reach up to 120 Gb. The new Xbox Elite edition corrects this issue by shipping with a 120 Gb drive. Microsoft now also sells a bigger drive for other models too, but has priced it sky high.

While the console setup is a simple process, it took a surprising amount of time. Once it was connected to the Internet, Xbox 360 immediately wanted to perform a system update. This took its time, and in the end the console wanted to reboot. Telling me what was updated and why was apparently not necessary at any point and the system wanted to connect immediately to Xbox Live-service. For this, I needed a Windows Live ID or Hotmail account to proceed.

The console came with free gold membership trial, after which the account stays free but becomes a silver account, meaning online gamers need to fork some cash afterwards to get their online gaming going. Installed on the hard drive was also Hexic HD, a fun puzzler as a sample of Live Arcade content. Due to an already long article, I’m not going to cover my experiences with Live here. The service is too vast to pass by with a few sentences, so I’m not even going to try.

Xbox 360 has three USB-ports, two on front and one on the back. These can be used to plug in a audio player, controller, or an external hard drive, for example. It remains to be seen if keyboard support is added through this someday. Wouldn’t mind if they added it.

Finally, the backwards compability. PS2 supported most of the old PSX games (few obscure Japanese titles weren’t supported). Xbox 360 can’t match that. The compability is handled by emulation software and while the list of supported games is long and growing, many games don’t work at all. For example, Ninja Gaiden required an update to work, but Sonic Heroes or Castlevania weren’t supported at all. Generally, you can count that most successful ones work (Halo 1 & 2, Ninja Gaiden, Fable, Knights of the Old Republic) and many others might not.

My experiences with Xbox 360 are still rather brief. I got the system late November, but the first games I bought just few months ago. Two reasons for this: Xbox 360′s games are ridiculously overpriced in Finland (Come on, 70e / 80$ for 360 version of a game when othed versions are 10 euro less) and the library is rather shallow. There’s sports, fighting, racing and shooting with more racing and shooting with… you get the idea. I don’t care how exited people get from Gears of War, Tom Clancy’s Whatever or Generic Explosive Action Game 4, they don’t catch my interest.

The demo downloads in Xbox Live (alongside Live Arcade) have managed to keep the console from gathering dust. Judging by the demos, Ninety-Nine Nights seemed kinda fun. Lost Planet impressed me, reminding about Starship Troopers and I liked the atmosphere. And snow. Sonic was crappy, they seem to have somehow managed to make the camera system and controls even worse.

Finally, the question I can’t seem to get out of my mind. Why is it called Xbox 360? Seriously. To make PlayStation 3 sound like hundred years old? I’d really like to know the grand idea behind it, but I’m too lazy to search. Oh well.

Microsoft has improved the hard drive capacity to 60 GB from the puny 20 GB that my console has and added HDMI, so good news for folks out there looking to buy one. And – as always – Amazon’s got you covered: