Xbox 360

[Obi Chris Kenobi 0]

Hey 2 months is 2 months, awesome!

[El Psycho Diablo 0]

I liked Saints Row better than San Andreas, too.

 

The level of customization you have generally blows it away, and you're not forced to do the storyline to unlock areas, stores, or anything else. There are a few annoying missions (I hate trying to drive and shoot at the same time), but not in the amount that SA had.

 

Plus, SR2 will have co-op campaign, which makes it a huge DO WANT in my book.

[Sly 0]

I, too, quiet enjoyed Saints Row even though I've never had the bullocks to finish the entire thing. I think it's mostly because my original game somehow got deleted and I had to start again from scratch.

 

Anyways, I'll be on CoD 4 tonight probably after midnight cst if anyone would like to try and catch me during my once a month outings on Live.

[Matt Young 0]

I, too, quiet enjoyed Saints Row even though I've never had the bullocks to finish the entire thing. I think it's mostly because my original game somehow got deleted and I had to start again from scratch.

 

Anyways, I'll be on CoD 4 tonight probably after midnight cst if anyone would like to try and catch me during my once a month outings on Live.

 

Did it give you the "Corrupted Save Game" message, too? My saves are listed as such when I am offline, but when signed on to Live, I can access them just fine.

[Sly 0]

I, too, quiet enjoyed Saints Row even though I've never had the bullocks to finish the entire thing. I think it's mostly because my original game somehow got deleted and I had to start again from scratch.

 

Anyways, I'll be on CoD 4 tonight probably after midnight cst if anyone would like to try and catch me during my once a month outings on Live.

 

Did it give you the "Corrupted Save Game" message, too? My saves are listed as such when I am offline, but when signed on to Live, I can access them just fine.

 

That's probably what happened. D'oh.

[Conspiracy_Victim 0]

Anybody know of a reputable 3rd party 360 repair place, preferably in or near Houston? I got the E74 error message so I suck it up, pay out the $107, and send it off to get repaired. I get it back today with a form letter saying that they didn't repair it because it "violated the limited warranty agreement". I call them up and I was told that they repair center found evidence of "tampering". Now, the only thing I've ever done to my machine is switch out my face plate so I'm understandably upset/pissed. I ask them what they're talking about, and the operator says that it'll take 24 to 48 hours to get the exact information from the service center for some reason. I'm more than willing to fight this as far as I can, but I guess I need to start finding alternatives if they keep stonewalling me.

[Broward83 0]

CV, I think there's some place in Sharpstown Mall called "Game Express" that deals with things like that.

 

Its where we (Gamestop) tell people to go to try and get things fixed with their systems.

[Conspiracy_Victim 0]

Gracias. Microsoft is pissing me off.

[Darthtiki 0]

This was brought up in the GTA thread, but can I use a flash drive of mp3s on the 360 or at least move them to the HD

[AnonymousBroccoli 0]

This was brought up in the GTA thread, but can I use a flash drive of mp3s on the 360 or at least move them to the HD

I don't know about moving them to the hard drive, but you can definitely plug in a USB drive and use that. I'm just using a 2GB Kingston DataTraveler thumb drive.

 

Alternatively, there's some way to network your 360 and a Windows PC together, and share content that way. I haven't tried it yet, so I don't know if or how well it works.

[Thoth 0]

This was brought up in the GTA thread, but can I use a flash drive of mp3s on the 360 or at least move them to the HD

 

You can use a flash drive of MP3's, but you cannot move them to the HD.

 

The only legit way to get music on the HD is to rip from an audio CD.

[Conspiracy_Victim 0]

Just to follow up, after over two weeks of run around, I finally got Microsoft's "evidence" of tampering. There's a small scratch on the serial number on the back of the 360, there's a seam where the two halves of the case meet, and the silver sticker next to the disc drive door is "damaged". Now, the seam has always been there yet it didn't keep them from fixing it when it got RROD'd less than a year ago. The sticker is, as far as I can tell, in perfect shape once I wiped off some dust on it. And the scratch on the serial number has been there for quite a while. Since I've had the damn thing for 2 1/2 years wear and tear will show on the case. That's what happens to anything over time. Yet this is incontravertable proof in their eyes that I am an EVIL HACKER out to exploit Microsoft's good nature for my own nefarious schemes. And God forbid you try to question a customer service rep about it. When I did I could hear his brain cells melting down because it wasn't covered in his "choose your own adventure" style manual (i.e. "If they ask this, turn to page 23"). Then his supervisor got on the line and all he did was spout off some worth line of crap about how strict they are on tampering (the idea that I've never tampered with the machine apparently never entered his head) and that there was nothing they could do.

 

So basically, if you've got a 360, for God's sake make sure you keep it in pristine condition externally. Microsoft will apparently look for any reason to deny service.

[AnonymousBroccoli 0]

That kinda reminds me of the tale of the dusty PS3 being denied warranty service.

[AndrewTS 0]

Guess whose time bomb went off last night?

 

It's my optical drive. It went from playing games one moment to not playing any DVDs or CDs the next. So basically it's the same old Sony-ish DRE for everything. Ugh.

 

Ironically, this isn't from playing it a lot, but rather appeared after not playing it for about 3 weeks. WTF.

[DrVenkman PhD 0]

While all of this talk of Xbox's not working sounds discouraging, I'm finally getting myself one for my birthday next week and am pretty excited about that prospect. Are the premium bundles still easy to find or have they been phased out by the Arcade Pack (which I seem to see advertised more prominently).

 

God bless that US dollar because I'm able to save significant money by buying a 360 in the States while on vacation and because it's more than 48 hour period, no tax or duty has to be paid on it when coming back into Canada.

[Jaxxson Mayhem 0]

This was brought up in the GTA thread, but can I use a flash drive of mp3s on the 360 or at least move them to the HD

I don't know about moving them to the hard drive, but you can definitely plug in a USB drive and use that. I'm just using a 2GB Kingston DataTraveler thumb drive.

 

Alternatively, there's some way to network your 360 and a Windows PC together, and share content that way. I haven't tried it yet, so I don't know if or how well it works.

 

 

All you gotta do is hook the 360 to your network and you can stream video, music, and pictures from any computer on the network. It's a really great feature.

[Broward83 0]

I coulda sworn the only way to do the link between 360 and PC was if you had WindowsXP Media Center as your OS....

[Thoth 0]

I coulda sworn the only way to do the link between 360 and PC was if you had WindowsXP Media Center as your OS....

 

If you want to run Windows Media Center Extender, on your 360, you need XP Media Center, or Vista Home Premium (or Ultimate).

 

BUT, if you just wanna stream photos, music, and videos, you just need Windows Media Player 11, or Zune software, or other applications (xbox.com has support info for this).

 

Since Media Center Extender doesn't support DivX, but built in Xbox does, there's no point for Media Center.

[AndrewTS 0]

While all of this talk of Xbox's not working sounds discouraging, I'm finally getting myself one for my birthday next week and am pretty excited about that prospect. Are the premium bundles still easy to find or have they been phased out by the Arcade Pack (which I seem to see advertised more prominently).

 

God bless that US dollar because I'm able to save significant money by buying a 360 in the States while on vacation and because it's more than 48 hour period, no tax or duty has to be paid on it when coming back into Canada.

 

 

The Premium has traditionally been the best seller, so why would they get rid of it? Plus, it's the one that has the hard drive. Arcade only has a memory card.

[DrVenkman PhD 0]

I guess I meant to say, since they sell so well, is it readily available. By "phased out", I meant that all point of product advertising I see in stores is for the cheaper arcade pack.

[Broward83 0]

Because its so damned cheap and we try our best to sell them to people too stupid to know they need the Pro model to really do anything with the system.

 

I hate when we get those things in our store..fuck, I think we all threw a small party when we got the last of the god-awful Halo3 systems out the door.

[AndrewTS 0]

I don't typically see breakdowns of the sales by SKU, but I know that MS had basically caught up with all their shortages from the beginning of the year/

[KingPK 0]

It's like the Arcade is for people that can't find a Wii and just decide "well, this one has games included too, so why not?" If you want to download even one demo from XBox Live you absolutely need a HDD. I usually say when asked that the Arcade is only for those who don't want to go online AT ALL and just want to play games. Though then you miss out on the content updates and patches and everything.

[AnonymousBroccoli 0]

God bless that US dollar because I'm able to save significant money by buying a 360 in the States while on vacation and because it's more than 48 hour period, no tax or duty has to be paid on it when coming back into Canada.

All you're really trading off is Canadian taxes for US taxes. The console prices are the same right now. Unless you're getting it used or on sale or something.

[Matt Young 0]

I found Virtua Tennis 3 on clearance at Target for $9.98. I had a coupon for $10 off any 360 game at Target, so I ended up getting this one for 77 cents after tax. I figured starting a topic would be pointless, especially with no Leena, but here are my impressions, copied from another board where there is actually a discussion of the game:

 

I don't know about this game.

 

My impressions from last night, when I cracked the game open and played for 4 and 1/2 hours or so: This game is awesome! I played through a whole year of World Tour, and I managed to gain 260 achievement points. The only problem was that it was too easy. I wanted to adjust the difficulty (which I now know you can't on World Tour) because I was winning 2-0 every time, and 90% of the time, the opponent wouldn't even score a point.

 

Then I started up the game today and began year 2. My first tournament was a rank 204 and up (I'm #143). Um... What the fuck happened? I'm in the very first round (I've retried it 8 times) and I can rarely even score a point, much less win. I expected/hoped for an increase in difficulty, but this just went from Very Easy to Very Hard in a flash. It's not even challenging. It's just frustrating and cheap.

 

I've been playing video games for 20+ years, and this game has the worst balancing issues I have ever seen. It sucks, too, because I really liked the game. But this ruins it.

[Jaxxson Mayhem 0]

I coulda sworn the only way to do the link between 360 and PC was if you had WindowsXP Media Center as your OS....

 

If you want to run Windows Media Center Extender, on your 360, you need XP Media Center, or Vista Home Premium (or Ultimate).

 

BUT, if you just wanna stream photos, music, and videos, you just need Windows Media Player 11, or Zune software, or other applications (xbox.com has support info for this).

 

Since Media Center Extender doesn't support DivX, but built in Xbox does, there's no point for Media Center.

 

 

 

Yup.

[Exslade ZX 0]

So, is there any reason my clock keeps getting changed back every time I play Mass Effect?

 

I keep resetting the clock, but then every time I save a Mass Effect game, it seems to go back to November of 2005. It changes it the console settings as well, which just messes up the date on all of my game saves. Just wondering if there was any reason, or if anyone else experienced this.

[Obi Chris Kenobi 0]

So, is there any reason my clock keeps getting changed back every time I play Mass Effect?

 

I keep resetting the clock, but then every time I save a Mass Effect game, it seems to go back to November of 2005. It changes it the console settings as well, which just messes up the date on all of my game saves. Just wondering if there was any reason, or if anyone else experienced this.

 

If you're not hooked into xboxlive the system clock resets, other then that, I have no idea why.

[Matt Young 0]

I've been off Xbox Live for long periods and the clock never resets. However, it does reset if you unplug the system.

[Exslade ZX 0]

I've been off Xbox Live for long periods and the clock never resets. However, it does reset if you unplug the system.

Ah, ok then that's the problem.

 

I switch it between TVs (HD/Standard) so I guess it resets every time I do that.