Greetings programs! Tis I, the dis/honorable Sir Doctor (Fleet) Admiral James Danger Disdain XXXVII, esq and I've got a question for you video game heads. Within a couple'a weeks I'm thinking it's nigh time to join the wonderful world of the X-Box 360, as my only "next generation" gaming experience over the last few years has been borrowing the Wii a few times. Don't get me wrong, whilst I absolutely LOATHE AND DETEST the wii version of NBA JAM (how they could do no online play = world's most crock of shit. oh and not being able to change the controls WHATSOEVER is a nice touch) I very much enjoyed a core of ~5-10 games, including New Super Mario Bros, Super Mario Galaxy 1/2, the Zelda Game, Mario Kart online LIKE A BOSS with the gamecube controller, metroid other m, tatsunoko vs capcom, and of course no system is complete without a proper port of the Metal Slug Anthology. Good times.

Anyways, now that the X-Box 360 has been around for a long time and I'm sure we're merely ~2 years away from the X-Box 3/720/etc, I reckon now would be a good time to notch a new 360 for a reasonable price, considering there's a ton of games out there in the secondary market, Greatest Hits Collections (TM, no doubt) and X-Box live is robust enough as to where if I buy some of those $60/yearlong cards I can get online and play motherfuckers in Madden, NBA JAM, and fighting games until the cows come home.

I see that there's a nice jet-black X-Box 360 with a 4gb HD that goes for $200. Then there's the same exact thing with a 250gb HD for $300, and then there's even pricier bundles with the Kinect, however I can say with divine providence "FUCK THE KINECT!" cuz if I wanted to play games where I get up and move around I'd simply go outside and play basketball or football as opposed to some gay-ass dancing/fitness/"sports" video game.

So my question to you X-Box 360 heads is this.... is having a 4gb HD truly a bottleneck? Obviously Microsoft wouldn't sell a system with a HD that wouldn't be functional for the average user (which, lamentably, I have devolved into since the days of the Sega Dreamcast). By and large, I say FUCK DOWNLOADABLE CONTENT because this new phenomenon of putting out a game that intentionally leaves out a handful of characters which you can then go and either additionally purchase or receive via a pre-order with amazon.com or gamestop is a crock of shit. I know that developers nowadays wanna bilk "hardcore gamers" for all of their $$$ possible, and it's technically rather ingenious to toss in some novelty costumes/characters/non-essential-crap and then dangle arbitrary prices over it so therefore the "hardcore" gamers can go buy a bunch of shit that takes a $60 game and ultimately makes it cost $60-75 or whatever.

I also know that with the 360 you can dump a bunch of files off of game discs and have them stored on the HD to expedite loading times, and I'm also familiar with the X-Box live arcade where you can go and re/purchase "classic" games or Made-for-the-Arcade games like Megaman 9/10, Blaster Master, etc etc. I do recognize that technically there would be additional value to having all of that HD space.

But as I said, my question is whether or not the 4gb version is really a bottleneck? On the surface, $100 for an additional 246gb of HD seems reasonable, however I'm operating on a shoestring budget and would love to keep the costs as low as possible. I also know that it's possible to buy a hard drive and put it in there / hook it up externally and do all of this stuff, however my brother said something like "eh, it's worth the $100 to just get the HD in there already if you can do that"

So like, as I said I see myself playing some NBA Jam, Madden, fighting games (Soul Calibur 4/5, the Marvel vs Capcom game, or well, just about any Capcom/Namco fighter really) and maybe even getting into FPS games someday (altho the concept of using a controller to play a FPS game seems wrong, seeing as i'm an oldschool KB/mouse purist, but hey, it's popular with the kids nowadays) and like, when I get on X-Box live even tho I have a shit 75k/sec DSL connect @home, I could see myself watching youtube videos on it this fall, mainly cuz my windows 7 craptop doesn't like playing youtube videos ever since I upgraded.

Otherwise, I really don't see myself marking out for downloadable content, or having this carnal desire to dump parts of every game I own on the HD so I can save on load times... nor do I see myself downloading movies or even a shit-ton of "X-Box Classic Arcade" games to fill up the HD... basically, I just want to get a few good games, play the shit out of them, and then migrate online to get my ass kicked by 13 year old kids like I'm going up against a korean in StarCraft/2 (foreal).

So pardon my tl;dr, babble, etc, do you lot think the 4gb version is fine for a more casual gamer, or should I bite the bullet and go fro the $300/250gb version, even tho that'd totally shoot my wad and kill me on getting other accessories or maybe even the X-Box live yearly subscription for a minute..

Anyone who read all of this, PM me the word EXCELSIOR!!!! to redeem your $$$$FREE PRIZE$$$$

No cheap, high quality jerseys were harmed in the creation of this post.

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Sincalypse, I'm kinda of in the same boat as you right now, I am looking at the new X-Box's that are the 250g for about 300.

Right now Best Buy has a trade in program, so I am sending them some stuff soon, like games and consoles to get some gift cards.

Lipid is your man on these type of things, but I would guess the 4GB would do you right, unless you plan to:
- download movies to the harddrive to play them later
- download a bunch of XBox Live Arcade games
- save a bunch of old save games (I tend to delete them and sell the old games pretty quick)

Just my thoughts.

Good point... I guess I should've said something like DLC (downloadable content) for map add-ons and other game add-ons. Those take up a bit more filespace depending on the title.

Sorry for not getting back to this like I told you I would sooner, but IMU and Mud pretty much covered everything I would have talked about.

It sounds like you are going to be a pretty casual player, and as such the 4GB should be good for you. The only concern would be if you get into a few games to the point that you want to do the DLC for them...then you'll use up that 4GB pretty quick.

You asked about external storage solutions, and there is some good news. You can install 2 external USB flash drives, up to 16GB each, so you would get 36GB of total storage. However, if you start getting into everything the system is capable of doing (download movies, DLC, store music) you'll be shocked how quickly even 36GB can be filled up.

I have a question about the 4g Xbox, if you were just going to play the 2 big football games and maybe a couple of other sports games, is the way to go.

I probably won't download movies, store music, would like to download the college football roster.