Friday, August 8, 2008

Xbox 360 Elite: It Eats Money!



Since I'm already in a "political" mood, I thought I'd share some qualms I have about the Xbox 360 Elite. Well, sans the fact that the only real advantage I can see to getting an Elite is an HDMI cable and a bigger hard drive, though the former should be included with every 360 and the latter isn't really necessary at all.

So last week my friend bought an Elite that was bundled with two games, Marvel Ultimate Alliance and Forza Motorsport 2, neither of which are more than mediocre at best. The price for this? $449.99 plus tax. (As a side note both games together would only net you about $9 at your local GameThief, I mean GameStop, as my friend tried to sell them almost immediately. But that's a different post all together.) He also bought three other games but I won't include them in the price as they were individually selected. Anyhow, when my friend got back to his house, set everything up, and turned on the system he realized that he didn't have an Ethernet port near his Elite, as it doesn't have wi-fi capabilities, and would have to go out and get an adapter. The adapter's cost? $99.99 plus tax. He had to drop one hundred dollars just so that he would have the ability to get online and pay a $49.99 subscription cost (per year) to be able to use Xbox Live, which lets you play your online 360 games well... err... online! He had to pay money just to be allowed the privilege of paying more money! Outrageous! Not to mention that there wasn't one time while he was on Live that I didn't hear some little kid talking crap or see some guy named "ILovePenis" (or some variation of "ILovePenis").

I honestly have no clue as to why someone would get a 360 over a PS3 unless they were getting an amazing deal on said 360. (i.e. it was free) I mean, the PS3 has wi-fi capabilities, a blu-ray player, and free Internet services. Not to mention most of the same games as the 360, since the 360 only has a hand full of decent to good exclusives anyway. Sure the games may be a bit more expensive on the PS3, but you can play online with any of them without being some kind of "premium" member and the quality is generally higher. So in summary, for shame 360 buyers, for shame. If you are having such a hard time holding on to your money I suggest investing in something, donating the money to a charity, burning it, or my personal favorite: building a miniature money castle... and then burning it.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

oh... you used burning as an example twice just so you know, and btw a better option wouldve been "giving it to me" Just saying...

Itchitaka said...

Actually, the second usage was after you build the miniature money castle. See what I did there? And also, I can only assume that whoever is reading this is already giving me money in some form or fashion so I declined from listing it. =]

TraceLines said...

You all seem to be missing the whole fact that there's a way to avoid all of this.

Follow me on this. I bought a -used- Xbox360 for $250. Then, $3 in materials for the DVDROM flash. $10 in ethernet cable (much, much, much cheaper to NOT get these from Best Buy), $30 in DVD+R-DLs. $12 in machine screws and washers for BSoD fix 6 months after initial purchase.

I've probably saved more money in games at this point than it cost to get that 3shitty Elite up and running.

Mmm. Arrhh, mateys.