Xbox 360

The Xbox 360 is the latest gaming console produced by Microsoft and the successor to the Xbox. It is also the first 7th generation gaming console which was released on November 22, 2005 then followed by its competitors; Sony’s Playstation 3 and Nintendo’s Wii. LittleBigGamer.com takes an in-depth look on this sleeping dragon.

Xbox 360

The BIG

Slim, sexy and light, those are my first impressions on the Xbox 360 when I first laid my hands on the said console. Unlike the previous big & bulky Xbox, the new console shows off a sweet sexy look, the ‘Green Ring of Life’ and a new Arctic chill color trademark. The console also has a new feature but is already shown on other consoles wherein you can lay the console flat (like it used to) or make it stand up just like the Playstation 3. Xbox has also released their own version of wireless game controllers as well as other accessories such as; dance mats, Gamercize and a webcam for chatting.

If there was one thing Xbox 360 developers should be really proud of is the console’s Xbox Live. With its excellent online gaming experience, the Xbox 360 can play hundreds of online original Xbox games which the other two competitors can’t keep up with. Tons of downloadable movies and music files can also be accessed through Xbox Live, gamers can now store downloadable content on their own consoles. Also, Microsoft had just recently announced the new Xbox Live update called the ‘New Xbox Experience’. The new update will provide Xbox 360 gamers with new features such as the ability to install games from disc to the hard drive which will reduce disc drive noise and in-game load times. Also, a new community system has been added which allows the creation of digitalized avatars wherein you can use them when sharing photos and files as well as playing arcade games.

The said update requires at 128MB free space on either a hard drive or a memory card.

Games on the Xbox 360 have gotten a lot better than the previous one. More exclusive games are now being produced that creates anticipation on gamers that helps Microsoft increase their sales. Also, previous exclusive games on other gaming consoles have now made their way into the Xbox 360. Games such as Devil May Cry 4, Final Fantasy XIII, Tekken 6 and Playstation’s all-time exclusive,  Grand Theft Auto 4. This will definitely attract more and more gamers to buy the Xbox 360, or better yet, convert Playstation gamers into the Xbox gamers.

Colorful Buttons are like candies

The Little

Infamously know as the ‘Red Ring of Death’, The Xbox 360 has the same fail safe feature with its predecessor that shows off 3 red rings indicating “General Hardware Failure”. Most of the earlier versions are prone to hardware crashes and will most likely demotivate possible gamers to buy the Xbox 360.

The noisy DVD drive and exhaust fan is really one of the sad points of this console, compared to the PS3 which is almost-silent, the Xbox 360 creates a disturbing noise that will distract gamers from playing using loud speakers. No built-in wireless networking or Wi-Fi is also one thing, the only supported wireless feature of the console is for the controller which totally sucks.

Online gaming with the Xbox Live has never been this good… for the first month that is, online gaming requires paid subscription compared to the Playstation Network which is FREE. DVD video qualities are substandard, HD DVD movies requires a much larger external memory which also fills up very quickly anyway.

Some say that this might be the pivotal turning point of the Xbox 360 and possibly its downfall; Microsoft had just recently announced that there will be NO Blu-Ray discs for the Xbox 360. Enough Said.

What LittleBigGamer Thinks…

The Xbox 360 has then again proved themselves as a worthy opponent. With its superb online services and a great game library, the Xbox 360 is still a tough nut to crack. Microsoft should really consider having Blu-Ray discs as almost 60% of gamers rely on the said format as they’re much cheaper than HD DVDs. Ultimately, the Xbox 360 will surely give you the best online gaming and media experience unlike no other.

The Xbox 360 Pill

Unlike the other competitor consoles, the Xbox 360 has its own retail versions for different types of gamers, see the list below.

1.  Xbox 360 Arcade (previously known as Xbox 360 Core)
- is the replacement and the improved version of the Xbox 360 Core and has been maintaining a price of 199.99 USD. This package includes a wireless controller, HDMI 1.2 output, composite AV cable an internal 256 MB memory chip and 5 Xbox Live Arcade games.

•    Boom Boom Rocket
•    Feeding Frenzy
•    Luxor 2
•    Pac-Man Championship Edition
•    Uno

2. Xbox 360 Pro
- is the standard version of the Xbox 360 which has all Xbox 360 Arcade features and includes a component and composite cable with an optional optical output instead of using a composite cable. The package comes along with an external 60GB Hard Drive which can be easily detached, store downloaded content, provides backward compatibility support and 2 Xbox 360 games.

•    Lego Indiana Jones : The Original Adventures
•    Kung Fu Panda

3. Xbox 360 Elite
- is the most expensive and the upgraded version of the Xbox 360 Pro. The Xbox 360 Elite unit is different from the other which has a matte black finish and has a 120GB hard drive for more storage capacity. It also includes a black controller, headset and HDMI 1.2 cable that matches the consoles’ black matte finish. Current price for the Elite package is 399.99 USD and will be expecting to drop down later this year.  This console has the same features with the Pro version but has more power in terms of storage capacity and graphics definition. It also supports backward compatibility and comes with two Xbox 360 games.

•    Lego Indiana Jones : The Original Adventures
•    Kung Fu Panda

Xbox 360 Specs

Custom IBM Power-PC Based CPU

* Three symmetrical cores running at 3.2 GHz each
* Two hardware threads per core; six hardware threads total
* VMX-128 vector unit per core; three total
* 128 VMX-128 registers per hardware thread
* 1 MB L2 cache

CPU Game Math Performance

* 9 billion dot product operations per second

Custom ATI Graphics Processor

* 500MHz processor
* 10 MB of embedded DRAM
* 48-way parallel floating-point dynamically scheduled shader pipelines
* Unified shader architecture

Polygon Performance

* 500 million triangles per second

Pixel Fill Rate

* 16 gigasamples per second fill rate using 4x MSAA

Shader Performance

* 48 billion shader operations per second

Memory

* 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM
* 700 MHz of DDR
* Unified memory architecture

Memory Bandwidth

* 22.4 GB/s memory interface bus bandwidth
* 256 GB/s memory bandwidth to EDRAM
* 21.6 GB/s front-side bus

Overall System Floating Point Performance

* 1 teraflop

Storage

* Detachable and upgradeable 20GB hard drive
* 12x dual-layer DVD-ROM
* Memory Unit support starting at 64 MB

I/O

* Support for up to four wireless game controllers
* Three USB 2.0 ports
* Two memory unit slots

Optimized for Online

* Instant, out-of-the-box access to Xbox Live features with broadband service, including Xbox Live Marketplace for downloadable content, gamer profile for digital identity, and voice chat to talk to friends while playing games, watching movies, or listening to music
* Built-in Ethernet port
* Wi-Fi ready: 802.11a, 802.11b, and 802.11g
* Video camera ready

Digital Media Support

* Support for DVD-Video, DVD-ROM, DVD-R/RW, DVD+R/RW, CD-DA, CD-ROM, CD-R, CD-RW, WMA CD, MP3 CD, JPEG Photo CD
* Ability to stream media from portable music devices, digital cameras and Windows XP-based PCs
* Ability to rip music to the Xbox 360 hard drive
* Custom playlists in every game
* Built-in Media Center Extender for Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005
* Interactive, full-screen 3-D visualizers

High-Definition Game Support

* All games supported at 16:9, 720p, and 1080i, anti-aliasing
* Standard-definition and high-definition video output supported

Audio

* Multi-channel surround sound output
* Supports 48KHz 16-bit audio
* 320 independent decompression channels
* 32-bit audio processing
* Over 256 audio channels

System Orientation

* Stands vertically or horizontally

Customizable Face Plates

* Interchangeable to personalize the console