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Xbox 360 20 GB Price Cut "While Supplies Last"
Erik J sends word that the rumored price cut on the 20-GB Xbox 360 is true, sort of. The Seattle PI's coverage says: "But the reduction isn't exactly what it might have appeared. In reality, it's more like a clearance sale, designed to empty the shelves for a new Xbox 360 with three times the digital storage, at the same price as before... As widely reported in advance, Microsoft is dropping the price of the 20-gigabyte Xbox 360 to $299.99. The unexpected twist: Sales of that model will end when current supplies run out."
Link: http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/microsoft/
Clearly they want to get rid of these machines and make room for the ones with more storage. How is that unexpected?
As posted on Engadget, they are clearing out the 20GB model to be replaced by a 60GB model.
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
Downloadable content. Patches, extra maps, gameplay types, movies, games from arcade, music. Really, whatever you can pull off Xbox Live.
For example AMD undoubtidly make all there CPUs with the intention of them being the top of the line CPU technology currently allows for, however alot are unstable, but run stable at a lower speed. So when they put an 8GB drive in the original xbox, it was likely a much higher value that failed to meet the grade and was sold off cheaply, as a year or two, passed HDD manufacturing techniques would have been improved, so were a "Failed" cheap HDD might have once ended up at 8GB, it was now 10, or 20 GB. M$ simply partitioned them smaller as to 8GB to simplify the process of installing them, no point rebuilding software/firmware to handle a higher capacity when there isn't any real benefit (To those who ran them unmodded of course:)).
The current 20GB hard drives were likely the cheap failed end of sata drives when they first started mass production of the 360, likely now no HDD makers go that small (cheaply) so the new line of "failed" HDDs are 80GB or whatever they are going to bundle. As for not letting you use your own, well M$ want you to buy there stuff, and only theres, why else should someone else get payed, its the same with memory cards, controllers, etc. on the 360, unlike the various 3rd party stuff for the original. M$==Vendor lock in.
"I may be full of crap about this game, and I may be wrong, and that's fine." -Jack Thompson
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When I can get a 500GB drive for $69 and the 'upgrade' to a 120GB external drive costs $180, you know they're making a killing on capacity.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
The Mass Effect PC port added a whole ton of new features that the 360 version didn't have. In the 360 version, you could not command your squadmates directly, you could just tell them whom to attack. In the PC version, you could directly control your characters, completely changing the feel of the game.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Right, because no other company ever makes lock in. Nope, I'm just imagining memory sticks, atrac audio codec, minidiscs, UMDs and all that jazz.
The memory stick and the Minidisk is not just made by Sony it is licensed to other manufacturers as well. Many PC's have SD, Memory Stick and CF adaptors. ATRAC is a Sony proprietary codec and if you care to look there are many other proprietary codecs that have patents on them including some by Microsoft. Basically all vendors try to lock the consumer to their product and Microsoft is IMHO one of the worst for doing this.
As for UMD that is a proprietary Sony format however it is mainly used for the PSP since people could not see the point of buying movies on this disk. UMD has done surprisingly well since it is relatively cheap to produce and stores approx 1.8GB which is fine for the PSP. Of course you could put a game on a memory card (now) but this would still add significantly to the cost to the game.
There ain't no such thing as proprietary standards only proprietary formats. Standards are by definition open.
One?
Real USB. Standard DLNA servers. Multiple memory card formats. Third-party codecs. A button to install third-party operating systems (including linux) in the default UI...
Sure... One...