Xbox 360 Elite
This will be my last ‘random’ blog for a while, I promise. 
I need to knuckle down with my work a LOT more and stop messing about. Although I did say that in an earlier post, I’ve not been totally productive of late. Any-who, lets get on with some sexy typing. :p
<ramble start> Really, if any of you have been reading my Blog for some time now will know about the problems I had with my original Xbox 360 back over the summer. Long story short (Or, read the long one here) the disk drive started to read any Game disk as a DVD movie, so effectively my Xbox was a powerful DVD player with Hard Drive games and an on-line system. Not exactly what you want when you want to get online and pwn newbs at Call Of Duty 4 or Grand Theft Auto 4, but hey, technology does go tit’s up sometimes. General gist was it was a £30ish fix with some messing about and at the time, I wanted to get rid of it so I wouldn’t be tempted to play games and not do my Uni work when we come back in September. Also, I had a high end PC back then, so any games that were on the console I could play on PC I would because I could, but as that got sold, I was left with no way of just sitting back and loosing myself in pretty graphics or a solid storyline of a game.
About mid-October time I started to get seriously bored when I had spare time. Without money I was limited to what I can do in forms of socialising and if I earned money from work it was going straight into the kitty for bill paying. When I did get money I went OTT on it on good times out and that kinda didn’t work to plan, so I toyed with the idea of getting another console. At first I was all ‘OMG PS3 NAOW!’ but, to be honest, it’s not as good as a Xbox 360 and the only difference is the Blue-Ray drive. I have a Blue-Ray drive in my laptop and the necessary cables to watch BD movies externally, so that didn’t ‘push’ me over to the PS3 side. I also toyed with the idea of getting a Wii. Lets face it, it has to be the best console ever, but the limiting games kind of put me off, although there are lots of good ones! So it’s a 50/50 yes or no with a Wii for me. I then got a nice email from Microsoft saying my 12 Months Xbox Live subscription was soon to run out in December. When it was to run out, they will automatically debit £39.99 from my Debit Card to pay for another year! WTF! I only bought a 12 Month subscription the December before, but I never said ‘Hay, take monies from me at your leisure…’ Plus, the fact I hadn’t signed into Xbox Live since June should indicate to them that I no-longer use the service! But no, Microsoft have other plans. So, the idea of getting another 360 came up. And, in the long run, it’s probably the best idea. Thinking about it… All my friends are on Xbox live, I have a good reputation with my gamertag, I know what I’m doing with it and the rules behind everything, so why not just jump back in? Well, I have. 
Initially I was going to get a second-hand one from a friend. But, on my Birthday I had money in my pocket and saw a deal for £230 for an Elite with 2 games. This seemed good so I just… bought it. And, I have to admit I have missed a lot when it comes to the Xbox.
First off, the new Xbox Experience is very nice. It’s taken me a good week to now master navigating it. I’m so used to the old one it’s untrue! Also, they have added Mii style Avatars but their higher poly and quality with more customisation options, more fluid animations and some very nice hidden features. It’s rather limited at the same time too. On the Wii when you create your Mii, you can choose the eyes and then change the size, orientation, height, width and spacing. On an Avatar on the Xbox 360 your limited to the eys they give you and all you can really do is change the Iris colour. Again, limited but I still prefer it. If you were to chuck the Mii and Avatar creation tools together, along with the customisation and vast clothing options, nothing would get in the way! I wonder if they will implement the Avatar’s into games? The Sims would be a good game to do this… Just imagine your Avatar living in your game. Would be good, but not sure if EA will do it for Sims 3.
In the long run I am very happy to have bought another Xbox. The new dashboard is nice, everything seems more fluid really. I think with a PS3 I would be bored by now. Maybe the same with the Wii but it depends on what games I get on it. I’m still toying with the idea of getting a Wii, the only problem is can I really spare £200 to sink into another console of which might not be played much? With the 360 if I don’t play a game on it, I can still talk to friends who aren’t in this country, watch DVD’s and play CD’s through my sound system. With a Wii I wouldn’t really be able to do that, so even if I don’t physically put a disk in and play it, I have about 5 other uses for it. Granted I could do it on a Wii, but I don’t fancy hacking a £200 console in case it goes tit’s up and then I am royally screwed for £200. Maybe a cheap 2nd hand one off eBay, but I will have to wait and see really. </ramble end>
So yeh, in escence I’m glad I got another Xbox 360. Plus, with the addition of now being able to instal games to your hard drive (Like a PS3 can) the 120GB hard drive the Elite has comes in handy. It’s a lot of money if any of you want to get one! But, in the long run they are worth it due to their versatility. Now, all I need is Saints Row 2 and Left for Dead, mmmmm good games!
So yeh, this will be my last random blog for a while. Their not totally going, don’t worry about that, but I do want to focus myself on work more, so as projects pickup and I find stuff online, I wont just tweet them saying ‘Omg this is amazing!’ I will try and write something up on here.
Adios amigos!
