Xbox 360 hard drive contents revealed: It’s loaded!
Oct 11, 2005 @ 12:40 am
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The Xbox 360 hard drive will contain pre-loaded specialized content. In a roundtable interview given at X05, J Allard has revealed that this content will be present on both the hard drive that is included in the Xbox 360 Premium Pack as well as on Xbox 360 hard drives purchased separately.
Detachable 20 GB hard drive of Xbox 360
The included content will consist of a number of Gamer Tiles, a custom soundtrack, an arcade puzzle game and videos.
The Gamer Tiles included will allow gamers to personalize their Gamer Cards by selecting one of these tiles to display as their icon when browsing Xbox Live.
A custom soundtrack, described by J Allard as a “free album” with “some really good tracks on it”, will allow gamers to road-test the Xbox 360’s audio abilities.
The provided videos include a brief “The Making of Xbox 360″ feature that will give gamers an insight into how the next-gen console was made, as well as acquainting them with the console’s video capability.
The arcade game Hexic will give gamers an impression of the type of arcade games that will be available on Xbox Live.
J Allard explains that Microsoft’s decision to provide content on the hard drive is “in part to get the gamers understanding [the] capabilities of the game system”.
Pre-order your Xbox 360 Hard Drive (20GB)
By staff, Xb360info.com
Writer’s comment:
Hexic was created by Alexy Pajitnov, the original creator of Tetris. I’m sure many gamers can remember just how addictive Tetris was, whether you were playing it on your Gameboy or your PC.
If Hexic’s anywhere near as addictive as Tetris, I bet there’ll be many gamers spending hours in front of this puzzle game. Just be sure you can tear yourself away from it for long enough to check out the 360’s launch titles!
Nicole Stiles, Xb360info.com staff
Editor’s note:
The original Xbox console came with an 8 GB hard drive as standard. Microsoft regretted this choice, as the majority of Xbox users hardly made any use of the hard drive.
Yours truly is the best example. I had my Xbox console since the day it was released in the US (in Nov 2001), and it still says “50,000 blocks available” on my hard drive. Looks like all the game saves I have on there haven’t even made a dent in the 8 GB available.
Apparently I am not the only one who has expensive, yet untouched, 8 GB of hard drive in their Xbox. The decision to bring the Xbox to the market with a hard drive built-in proved very costly and contributed significantly to Microsoft’s $4 billion loss on the original Xbox console.
With the Xbox 360, Microsoft is no longer willing to bear the costs of the hard drive, but leaves it up to users to decide whether they really want one. The bonus content provided with the Xbox 360 hard drive demonstrates Microsoft’s desire to increase the hard drive’s appeal to consumers.
Microsoft demands from game developers (who aren’t all that happy about it, apparently) that all Xbox 360 games can be played without a hard drive. Read more about the hard drive issue here.
By Markus Weichselbaum, Xb360info.com Editor
Oct 18, 2005 @ 12:12 am
curt Said,
personally i hate the idea of having to buy these hard drives, they should be just installed into the 360
Oct 19, 2005 @ 4:22 pm
ganphra (levi) Said,
IM TOTALLY PUMPED BOUT DA XBOX 360 ITS WICKED I PAYED $700.00 4 AN EXCLUSIVE XBOX 360 TO RESERVE ITS AWESOME………OH AND THE HARD DRIVE IS KEWL TO!
Oct 22, 2005 @ 11:02 pm
Simon Said,
The game saves and all that stuff haven’t made a dent on your HDD because there are 300,000 blocks on the HDD. Until you go through 251,000, it’s not […] more
Nov 7, 2005 @ 5:58 pm
jake Said,
i don’t like the fact that you have to buy the hard drive seperate, but i think it will be worth the money in the long run. The Xbox 360 is an awesom […] more
Feb 1, 2007 @ 6:34 am
xBUNOKAx Said,
I have one question about the hard drive. Every weekend I have to unplug my xbox cords from my tv, which isnt the simplest task. I go to my friends ho […] more
Nov 15, 2008 @ 3:50 pm
cc Said,
20gb hard drives suk when u save a game u can get 10 gigs gone just like that so if i were u get the 120 and that is way better