Microsoft embiggens memory unit, XBLA game size [update 1]

just get to the hard drive Microsoft.

and a clever (online?) transfer utility.


.

It's a perfectly crumulent word....

oh man 512 megs for 50 bux??? are you kidding me... i can buy a 40 gig hard drive for the competitive console and be done with it. what a joke.

This move suggests that Microsoft is planning to continue the core system, which would mean that, whatever they introduce this summer (120GB harddrive) will not be the end of the core system.

A noble spirit embiggens the smallest mind...

Yeah, its pretty useless (unless you play at friends' houses), and yeah its still overpriced, but it IS a better value per meg than the previous one, and at least they're listening.

For one of the previous posters, not only does buying a non-PS3 brand HD void your warranty, some of them don't even work (at least in a few isolated cases).

The old unit was 64mb, not 256mb.

And, yes, I'm waiting for the SD card adapter, too. :)

I still think $49.99 is toooooo much for a 512MB Memory Card. I am glad I have a preminum system. I have a Wii and I did not buy Nintendo's card either: I can buy any SD Card for the Wii and use it. This is what I hate about MS, thier proprietary accessories CRAP.

Jeff, you mean that $499-$599 "competitive console"?
Compared to my $299 Xbox 360?

So you've spent $550-$650, and I've spent $350 for an essentially equivalent gaming experience with a ton more games available for it? OH, THE HORROR WHAT HAVE I DONE

Really can't bring yourselves to simply report something without some sort of snarky comment in there can you? "Noisy Hard Drive"? The link you reference has nothing about hte hard drive being noisy -- it's about the fans. If you are going to take shots, at least shoot at the right target.

Oh, and by the way, the current MU is 64MB, not 256.

4. oh man 512 megs for 50 bux??? are you kidding me... i can buy a 40 gig hard drive for the competitive console and be done with it. what a joke.

That right there my friend will void the waranty of your 600 dollar machine, Plus Sony could start LEGALY briking systems with non-propetary HD's at anytime on a serial number basis(You should know about the PSP Firmware fiasco by now), belive me I learned my lesson when I modified my 360 in October, In the long run its just not worth it.

@ #8 actually it doesn't void your warranty as sony themselves include a tutorial on how to install a 3rd party hard drive. it is not marked as an unauthorized upgrade.

http://www.consolesource.com/blog/?p=33

Newsflash: prices for console accessories remain totally overpriced!
...$49=1 GB flash drive.
Thanks but, I'll stick to PC gaming.

People sure do get upset about the littlest things. Hardly anyone buys the memory card unit, since it's not needed for hardly anything. The only reason you'd actually need one is to transfer files from one 360 to another, and how often do people actually do that? I work in a gamestop, I've personally sold maybe 3 of these in an entire year, it's a somewhat useless add on.

Newsflash: PC users >>>>>>>>>>console users.
sales of PC memory devices>>>>>>sales of console memory devices.

Conclusion: PC memory devices price

to #4 actually it don't void your warranty, I read that on an issued of GamePro and I have come to understand that they where mistaken.

So I give merrit to your argument.

@14:

What does that mean - that PC users are going in the direction of console users, and that sales of PC memory devices are going in the dirction of sales of console memory devices?

@_@

People need to get used to the idea of the Core System and that it is never going away. It doesn't matter that the Premium package is a better value, what matters is being able to offer the lowest cost of entry and a more traditional console package to those who find the new level of hardware features confusing. Letting those who need to scale a learning curve start cheap and spend more in the long term is better than telling those people they have only the one choice from this brand.

This 512MB unit is a better value than the 64MB card at even the reduced $29 price but MS could do a lot better. Produce an overpriced SD card adapter for $30 retail, delivering a good profit for both MS and retailers, and let consumers take advantage of the increasingly better SD card offerings.

Newsflash! PC's required to run a similar game cost 3 times as much...

Also, newsflash!! Horses cost less in oats to get around than cars with gasoline...

WTF

The current Memory card is 64Mb (not 256)
and costs $39.99. A 512Mb card for 49.00 gives you 8 times the memory for only $10 more.

And for some of you out there, relatively speaking, the price of all compact memory cards are and will always be more than a regular HDD.

So cos spent 299 + 50 (for the memory card) = 349
versus 499 for PS3
349 = minimal hard disc to save demos, downloads
349 = no multiplayer (that adds up to 200USD
349 = no wireless, HDMI
349 = pathetic BC (funny how xbots find BC on PS3 weak with 1000+ titles vs how many on fatbox
349 = a console with 20% defect rate
349 = noisy, oevrheating unit
349 = no BR
Just add up how much is the value for each of those items and then we come back

On the bright side, I'm glad they finally upped the limit on XBLA games. Anyone who buys memory units is getting royally screwed though, For the price of 1gb in mem cards, you can have 20gb of hd space.

To put it into perspective, SD memory is down to about $20 bucks for 1gb.

" prices for console accessories remain totally overpriced!
...$49=1 GB flash drive.
Thanks but, I'll stick to PC gaming."

i don't know where you shop, but i bought a 1gb memorex flash drive for 24.99, regular priced at best buy this weekend. That was the cheapest, but the others were mostly around $30.

everyone knows proprietary 1st party storage is over-priced, but the parents and know-nothing idiots buy them because incompetant employees go straight to them and claim that they are the most reliable and best to buy.
i don't see why no one has made 3rd party memory cards for the 360, because even though they won't have the magical certification sticker, they will still work, and certification has never stopped pelican, datel, and nyko before. It's flash memory with a proprietary connector, not magic.

"20. So cos spent 299 + 50 (for the memory card) = 349
versus 499 for PS3
349 = minimal hard disc to save demos, downloads
349 = no multiplayer (that adds up to 200USD
349 = no wireless, HDMI
349 = pathetic BC (funny how xbots find BC on PS3 weak with 1000+ titles vs how many on fatbox
349 = a console with 20% defect rate
349 = noisy, oevrheating unit
349 = no BR
Just add up how much is the value for each of those items and then we come back

Posted at 12:45PM on Mar 5th 2007 by smik"

Jesus, can somebody please just ban this asshole already?

#20, are you a retard, or do you just play one on 'teh internets.'

Do you realize that for $349, and the list you made, you can't do that with a PS3? Guess why? Go on. I'll let you figure it out. Done? It's because you pay $150 'minimum' for a PS3. With no games worth your or my time.

So while your list is quite cute, and quaint, I might add, you can't do jack shit with $349 in relation to a PS3. Other than a down payment.

Are all fanboys this stupid? "Hahaha!!1! I'll call you an xbot, even though I'm an equally stupid Sony fanboy."

Yeah, that'll show 'em. Hey, next time, you should put something about how Xbox only has FPS. I haven't heard anyone mention that before. Maybe imply that Gears of War is an FPS, too. No one makes that mistake.

Does nobody else think this is Microsoft's way of giving current users an official method of transferring all of their game saves to, say, a newer, beefier 120gb hard drive?

Yeah. This has nothing to do with the core. Nobody in their right mind would pay $49.99 for this instead of $99.99 for a 20gb hdd.

"Newsflash: PC users >>>>>>>>>>console users.
sales of PC memory devices>>>>>>sales of console memory devices.

Conclusion: PC memory devices price"

Thats definitely not the reason. They all use the same commodity flash memory from enormous manufacturers. The difference is only that it might be put in an SD casing or in Microsoft's proprietary plastic enclosure. In fact, SD/CF/Memorystick/etc manufacturers probably have to pay licensing fees to those respective format consortiums in order to sell the product, something MS doesn't have to do with their proprietary design. Xbox compatible flash memory is so expensive because microsoft wants to make a shitload of money off of it. Microsoft might be losing money on every 360 sold, and they have to make it back somewhere. Thats why controllers (not including rechargable batteries) are $50.

Not knocking microsoft. Sony and nintendo have always done the same exact thing. Although they're slightly less bad this generation- Nintendo allowing saves to SD cards, Sony allowing saving to memory cards and usb storage devices, for the use of any standard 2.5" SATA drives, any bluetooth devices as a headset, etc. They're giving the consumer more choices in return for sacrificing the ability to sell more stuff with huge profit margins (such as proprietary headsets, memory cards, and hard drives). Of course you have to pay $600 just to get the PS3 so you could argue either way...

$350 = I'm on my 360 playin' some Geo Wars,
$350 = Unlockin' Achievements,
$350 = Buildin' my gamerscore,
$350 = Sendin' you Voice Messages,
$350 = Havin' $ left over for buyin' some Gears Of War, Halo 3, Forza, Mass Effect, Blue Dragon

Not feeling defensive about the Console you spent your $ on? PRICELESS

Smik,

You really are about as smart as a boiled beet. You point to Microsoft’s backwards compatibility list and label it pathetic, but you make no mention of how PAL PS3’s had their backwards compatibility severely crippled (13,000+ titles down to the 1,000 is PITIFUL) in the name of cost reduction that could be applied elsewhere. Microsoft never said they would have the Xbox’s entire library backwards compatible, only that they’d strive for it towards the end of the Xbox 360’s life and that they’d only have a handful of titles that were backwards compatible at launch. Sony, on the other hand, said they would include the hardware necessary to make the PS3 98% backwards compatible with all PS2/PS1 titles despite the cost (which is now tantamount to around $30 for the latest iteration of the Emotion Engine) and then openly ridiculed Microsoft for having to use software emulation.

If you don’t believe me, go read some of moronic comments made by Ken Kutargi and his underlings; they contradict themselves more than Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton, and George Bush Jr. combined (the reason for not having rumble in the Sixaxis is but the latest example of this). If it is within your crippled mental capacity to do so (after all, you can’t spell at a 3rd grade level), do you see the difference? Sony made promises and then later recanted on them, Microsoft made no promises it could actually break.

As far as HDMI’s concerned, can you explain to me why you need it in a gaming scenario? A game can be rendered between 480i-720p/1080i quite comfortably through component and most games are natively rendered at 720p. This is the developer sweetspot because it provides the highest resolution possible with all of the visual details we’ve come to expect from next-gen games; upscaling is a non-issue because it’s simply taking the same game and sizing it to fit a bigger screen. Few games will ever be rendered at 1080p natively because sacrifices in visual quality (anti-aliasing, particle effects, and textures to name a few) have to be made in order to keep the framerate stable or at least playable.

A 1080p native game without AA, anthroscopic filtering, and has a reduced number of textures will never look better than a 720p native game that has all of those features; the 1080p native game will only look slightly sharper. The only two benefits to actually having HDMI are A) playing a game at 1080p (native or upscaled) on a TV with a screen larger than 46’ (where the difference starts to become noticeable) that doesn’t allow 1080p content to displayed through component, and B) meeting the draconian DRM requirements of an HD-format. If you’re doing neither, or if you have an HDTV that accepts 1080p content via component, HDMI’s not needed.

As far as Blu-ray’s concerned, it’s not needed for gaming and it never was (beyond making one disc for all regions). You’re paying a $100-$150 premium for a technology that was only included for the sake of Sony and Toshiba’s HD-format pissing contest. It’s just a way for Sony to woo movie studios into supporting their format by saying, “We have more Blu-ray players than there are HD-DVD players”; in their eyes, the PS3 is a Blu-ray player first with gaming being relegated to second priority. Don’t say, “Games will have more textures because of Blu-ray!” because the PS3’s memory allocation doesn’t have the balls to make it possible. Don’t say, “Games will be more expansive on Blu-ray!” when massive games like Oblivion weigh in at a whopping 4.5 gigabytes.

The only people who will even come close to filling a single layer Blu-ray disc will be Japanese developers who adamantly refuse to use anything but space-hording HD-CGI to render cinematic sequences; in this instance, you shelled out $60 for nothing more than a slightly interactive movie. There’s a reason Blue Dragon spans 3 DL DVD’s, and it rests on Mistwalker Studios being unwilling to put the extra effort needed to use in-engine rendering for cutscenes that didn’t look much better than the actual gameplay. If a game like Gears of War can render all of its cinematics in near CGI detail just on the engine alone, there’s no excuse for developers not to do the same beyond being too lazy to make good use of their devkits (which, isn’t really a good excuse at all). And before anyone says, “That argument could be applied in the cartridge vs. CD debate” keep something in mind; solid state storage is prohibitively expensive per MB or GB in comparison to optical storage.

Let’s see…because the wired Xbox 360 controller has a lengthy cord and doesn’t rely on batteries for power, the wireless version doesn’t have much of a discernable advantage; oh, speaking of which, we can replace our batteries with cheap AA’s while you have to void the Sixaxis’s warranty if you replace the built-in Li-OH battery yourself. The defect rate isn’t 20% you half-baked, crab-infested piece of Paris Hilton c*nt-skin, it’s closer to 5%. There are more than 10,000,000 Xbox 360’s sold, and as such, it’d be safe to assume that around 500,000 of them have a problem; if the PS3 sold that number of consoles (which, it hasn’t broken the 2,000,000 unit barrier), it’d would also be plausible for there to be a similar number of defective units. Of that 500,000, I’m willing to bet money that some of them modded their 360’s and don’t want to fess up to it when Microsoft’s security popped them for not having matching firmware.

The noise people whine about is the DVD-ROM running full speed (honestly, my PS2 as well as my original Xbox are just as loud), and most non-launch systems run cooler to the touch than their silent PS3 counterparts. I suggest you use that deformed lump of gelatinous tissue you call a brain in order to come up with a half-way decent argument (also, go touch up on your elementary English skills) next time so you don’t make a total ass of yourself on this website for spouting off a bunch of crap that even an Alzheimer’s patient can call you out on.

"Newsflash! PC's required to run a similar game cost 3 times as much..."
Newsflash: Who needs expensive cars, when you can go and buy a bicycle?!
Also: http://game-drone.blogspot.com/2007/02/pc-gaming-expensive.html

"$350 = I'm on my 360 playin' some Geo Wars,
$350 = Unlockin' Achievements,
$350 = Buildin' my gamerscore,
$350 = Sendin' you Voice Messages,
$350 = Havin' $ left over for buyin' some Gears Of War, Halo 3, Forza, Mass Effect, Blue Dragon"

"$0 = I'm on my PC playin' some Grid Wars
$350 = E-peen growing
$350 = Gamerscore, who cares about that anyway?
$0 = Free VoIP and multiplayer on the PC
$350 = Hey, the X360 has a grand total of five exclusive games, most of which will eventually end up on the PC!"

Ugh, I am disgusted by console gamers.

"If a game like Gears of War can render all of its cinematics in near CGI detail just on the engine alone"
It can't. All lengthy cinematics in GoW are PRErendered using the game's engine. That is why it is easy to mistake them for in-game cinematics. What gives it away is the FPS drop when the actual in-game cinematics start playing.

Well, Since I got my Premium Console for $200+tax. I feel kinda bad for you, sin.

Wow. Microsoft takes two significant steps in the right direction and all you losers can do is bitch and whine about it. Get a life.

They could cut the price of the 360 in half and all the comments would be "whaa whaa whaa i payed double m$ sux! jsut give me my moneyb ack! there soooo greedy"

Jeez, talk about a glass half empty perspective.

Autocrawler,

I didn't say the sequences were rendered in real time (they obviously aren't because anything not a lancer rifle, hammerburst, or COG pistol isn't rendered in any of the cutscences in relation to the current weapon selection of the user), I just said they were rendered using the engine as opposed to CGI. You get the benefits of CGI-esque visuals, but it doesn't take up nearly as much space since you are using assets that are already at your disposal. Think back to the cinematics in Doom 3; they weren’t rendered in real time, but they were unmistakably rendered using the Doom 3 engine.

If you want real time cinematic rendering, you don’t have to look much further than Dead Rising. Considering Capcom’s engine still has a lot of room for improvement and has already yielded impressive results (Lost Planet’s visuals can be considered an obvious improvement over Dead Rising’s, which are already next-gen worthy), a game like Resident Evil 5 will look nearly as good as CGI (this is of course assuming they let their engine fully mature instead of abandoning it prematurely in favor of the U3 engine they just licensed). I think the implementation of CGI has long since outlived its usefulness and the only ones who still feel compelled to incorporate it into their games are those who don't feel like putting in the extra effort needed to push their devkits to the absolute limit of what they can do.

CGI served its purpose in the N64/PS1 generation and to some extent last gen to make up for obvious hardware shortcomings. We’ve moved beyond that. Since the gaming industry evolves like any other enterprise, they should either adapt and use more modern, proven techniques or they should find a line of work elsewhere that tolerates the use of archaic, outdated methods.

"CGI served its purpose in the N64/PS1 generation and to some extent last gen to make up for obvious hardware shortcomings."
Oh, that one, I agree with.

"Think back to the cinematics in Doom 3; they weren’t rendered in real time, but they were unmistakably rendered using the Doom 3 engine."
Umm, they actually *were* rendered in real time with the exception of a few PDA videos, at least in the PC version. I haven't played the XBox version though. You can verify this by experimenting with graphics settings.

"just said they were rendered using the engine as opposed to CGI. You get the benefits of CGI-esque visuals, but it doesn't take up nearly as much space since you are using assets that are already at your disposal."
Err, no: in GoW they are actually kept on the disc just as CGI.

Don't bother arguing with Autocrawler, he doesn't bother thinking before he speaks.

"$0 = I'm on my PC playin' some Grid Wars"

Yeah, because we all know you can have an Xbox-360 equivalent PC for $0. Last I knew, $350 barely even bought a decent video card.

Anyways - the bottom line is a $10 price drop on 64mb cards. Or, a new 512mb model for $10 more than the current card. Leave it to PS3 fans to come in here and start crap over that -- but, hey, I'd be defensive too if I bought a $599 dunce cap.

"The defect rate isn’t 20% you half-baked, crab-infested piece of Paris Hilton c*nt-skin, it’s closer to 5%"

Dude, that was intense.

"Yeah, because we all know you can have an Xbox-360 equivalent PC for $0. Last I knew, $350 barely even bought a decent video card."
You can play Grid Wars even on an integrated graphics. And as you are posting here, obviously you do have a PC.

"You can play Grid Wars even on an integrated graphics. And as you are posting here, obviously you do have a PC."

I don't think you're reading before you post.

For $350 can you buy any kind of next gen PC? Something Gears Of War caliber? No, didn't think so. (Hint - see the more recent build-your-own-PC-for-$800-and-play-some-but-not-all-pc-games article)

For $350 can you buy a PS3? No, didn't think so.

Yet, for $350 I _CAN_ by an Xbox 360 that is perfectly capable of playing Gears Of War, Halo 3, etc etc etc till my thumbs fall off. WTF is your argument with that? It's the TRUTH. Instead of saying "hey, cool, good job microsoft" you guys gotta come in here and lay yours turds all over everybody else.

Xbox releases improved accessories and some people just gotta get all defensive about their own expensive toys. Wow. I understand your frustration that things aren't working out the way you probably predicted, but take your blind hate and defensiveness somewhere else, please. Xbox is doing a lot of things well, whether you like it - or not.

A step in the right direction, but M$ really should give you a gig for $50.