Man, that's a lot of useful information. Nice work.

Awesome list. Nice job.

The one question I have. I was at a Wal-mart and they had a 360 demo system up. In the little arm that they have that holds the controller, there was a spot that said "Insert memory card for bonus content."

Is that something standard to get special content not available anywhere else, or something for people that won't have the ability to get on either Silver or Gold Live?

I recall back when news about the system just started to trickle out, they said that you'd be able to download exclusive goodies at kiosks and save them to your own provided memory card. I haven't heard anything recently about this though.

Can we pin this bad boy?

Yeah, you can still do that....Not sure what exclusive stuff or how long they will support that. I can see stores getting lazy with that (since I assume most will nto be on LIVE)

Plus, then you have to buy a memory card....which I have no need for.

<b>Please start or use other Xbox 360 threads for discussion... This is not a 1/Only Discussion thread, thx</b>

Great list, one question I had that could be added, if you have a current xbox live sub does it convert over to the 360?

Thanks for the kudos guys. I'll try and add answers to most of your questions. I'm still working on formating quite a bit.

I added a couple a great links in the link section just now: An awesome interview with the Xbox Live Arcade director concerning the possibilites of Live arcade and an excellent dissection of the Xbox 360 performed by Anandtech.

2 quick questions which some real video games techies may be able to answer for me.
#1. I always see the 360 standing upright in ads, but I assume it works when it is flat as well (like the original xbox or ps2). My setup makes it difficult to put the 360 right in if it HAS TO STAND UPRIGHT. So, does it work on its side as I assume it does?
#2. I am buying the premier package like most of you. Does it have an optical cable for audio to my receiver? Do I need just a standard optical cable or do I need to purchase a totally xbox 360 only optical cable also, which is what you had to do with the original xbox?
Thanks for any help.

#1. Yes, horizontal is fine

#2. You need to supply one. A standard one is fine (unless I missed something). A standard optical worked fine in the original XBOX HD-pack.

Thats a great interview! I kept thinking of Pixy when hearing this kind of stuff:


"So you've mentioned some of the big guys like Namco and Midway, but it seems like Xbox Live Arcade is starting to attract a lot of indie devs who might have trouble getting their games noticed at retail. Why do you think this has become so appealing for many independent developers?

GC: It's one of the things that I'm most excited about; it's one of the ideas behind me incubating Live Arcade in the first place....Games are getting more and more expensive to produce; the console games are $15-20 million bucks a pop. And what that's leading to is it's sort of like the Hollywood summer blockbuster phenomenon. Games get more and more expensive and the bar goes up and up and up--everything has to be in hi-def and play length is a big issue and what that's leading to is a lot of the larger publishers are saying, "We're not going to take the risk on any sort of innovation because it's not proven and if it falls flat we're screwed."

And so there's been kind of a dearth of innovation and there's really been a lot of "sequelitis." ...

a lot of really cool genres that we all grew up with that are still cool genres but no one can make any money off them anymore, like shoot 'em ups and side-scrolling platformers and 2D platformers and stuff like that. ...this is where I'm so excited about the indie game developer opportunity, and why you've seen me talk a lot about it, and this is the future. In my opinion, this is the Sundance Film Festival. This is the way for us to reach, and finally in the console business, for us to finally have some way to get indie developers on a console (some genres just work better on a console) in the living room and get people to see these on a mass market scale. I'm super excited about that."

For anyone interested, there was an interesting article posted on slashdot about AnandTech taking apart the 360 & seeing the guts... Good Read :)

http://www.anandtech.com/systems/showdoc.aspx?i=2610

Great job on this thread. I sure missed the 360 sticky there for a bit. The forum just wasn't home without it.

Nice job!!


Now big question: Will the 360 being able to decode WMVHD on some dvds like Terminator 2 Extreme Edition, Step into Liquid, etc. ?

I think that would be a definite plus if so.

I would bet my house that it would be a no.

BUT, if you have a Media Center PC you can stream that HD signal to your 360.

Forgive my ignorance, but confused by one thing. In most of the pre-release pictures I've seen of the 360, it's got a nice silver type color. However, lots of the pictures I've seen of those with actual 360's have white consoles. Now I know that the faceplates are interchangeable, but I thought the standard system was silver colored...

Great work Flay.

Looking above I noticed the camera. I haven't heard much about it. Is that a release day item?

Who on here will be the first to give a real teabag on PD0? :lol:

It looked more white to me in the pics and videos I've seen. I don't really care what color it is though.

Guess it was all the shading they used in the pics. :shrug: But you're right, color's not a big deal. Still, if it was offered in black...oh sweet sweet. Thanks for the response, man!

The dev systems are supposedly black. Such a tease! :)

Added a link to collection of pictures of a Xbox 360 on a Dell 2405fp monitor. Some sweet looking images of Kameo in there:

http://g-prime.net/x360/

Man that monitor is hot. Don't get me wrong, I love my Dell 20" wide, but man, that thing is huge!

Nice work Flay. :up: :up: Kleinman needs to put you on the payroll.

Thanks for the answers. I have a Monster HD cable pack for XBOX and that took a slightly different optical cable. Glad to know I can just use a standard one in this case. I already have an optical switcher in my setup, but I guess I'll need a component switcher once PS3 needs component as well for HD. Not enough inputs!!