Simple 360 hard drive question - Maybe if we peer pressure him he'll get get Gold
 

Really quick question; I haven't purchased a system since N64 but I bought a 360 Arcade yesterday so I can play the Halo trilogy. When I stuck Halo 1 in it said it needs a friggin' hard drive.

Are hard drives required to play every game on the Xbox 360 or is it just original Xbox games that need it? AKA Can I play Halo 3 without a hard drive?

Obviously I would test this myself if I had the third game yet but as it's due in the mail in a few days I would like to know if I should run out and get a hard drive before it comes, dammit all. Thank you for any responses!

Needs thermal paste.

Do you have a 360 memory card? The 360 has to download the correct emulation software in order to run original Xbox games, and it has to have somewhere to save that software. To answer your question, no, only a few games actually require the hard drive in order to function, but if you plan on doing any gaming at all, you should really have one. The 20GB aren't that expensive these days, since they're being phased out.

Well, the system came with a 256MB memory card, but that's not big enough, is it? I was really surprised and disappointed that the system didn't have an internal storage drive for this kind of thing... Maybe that's normal? I really have been out of the gaming world for about 8 years. Anyway, a hard drive and an ethernet cable should solve this then?

256MB should be enough for the emulation software and saving a few games. If you run out of room, buy a harddrive. However, if you intend on using the 360 to its potential (many games, playing from the harddrive, downloadable content) then you should just buy a harddrive now. If you're only going to play a few games, I believe the memory card will be enough.

I was given an arcade for christmas, and the emulation software, whether or not it's large enough to fit on a memory card, requires an HD. Personally I'd say to grab a 60gb or even a 20gb. Both can be found fairly cheap on ebay and such.

Yeah all I really want to do is play the Halo trilogy on my own... I'm not that interested in Live or downloadable content. I had the memory card plugged in when I put in Halo 1 and it gave me an error message about needing a hard drive, so I'm assuming the 256MB card is not enough.

Unfortunately, no matter what you need to buy a hard drive to play any original Xbox game. Every game for the Xbox made extensive use of the hard drive for saving, and to cache the game data as to save on load times. It was only with the 360 that the hard drive became optional, and a number of games require it, so there is even more reason to pick one up.

20 gigs goes a long way if you only plan on playing the Halo trilogy, and they're reasonably cheap.

Oh okay... I can't imagine how much all this crap cost before the price was dropped to $200 in the US. Thanks for all the info.

Most of us didn't get overcharged for the hard drive by getting duped into getting the Arcade unit.

Return it, get a pro with a 60 gig. I haven't seen the standalone 20s for sale since they released the 60s, although you might be able to.

Buying just the 60 is gonna set you back the 100 dollar price difference ANYWAY, so.

Besides, it's Christmas. You should be able to get a bundle somewhere. I know it's not much but Best Buy has a free 25 dollar gift card with a Pro purchase, and I'm sure you can find something better if you actually look.

All them have the Lego Indy and Kung Fu Faggot pack in, so you'll have one decent new game and one you can flip for a couple bucks at EB or use as a coaster or masturbate with or whateverthefuck.

If it were being used for nothing else, sure. Except you're overlooking one significan change to the Xbox 360 that happened recently: the New Xbox Experience. The NXE requires a reasonable chunk of space to store the various files/database stuff that makes it so much faster than the old dashboard. The minimum requirement is, I believe, 256 Mb of space, which is why the Arcades now come with that as standard.

And whilst a HDD isn't required for many games, it's very much worth having for nearly all of them, especially when you start thinking about things like add-on packs and other downloadable content (some of which can be had for free or very cheap). It just doesn't make sense not to have the HDD really.

As Skills said, if you can try and take back the Arcade and get it swapped over for one with a HDD.

You'll want a HHD eventually, whether you really need it or not. Luckily there's a ton of sales right now, and around these parts anyways (Canada) you can find a 60 gig drive for around 30 bucks if you look hard enough. I'm sure you can find something similar. Long gone are the days where you can get by with just a memory card.

Best reason to invest in one is simply to install games to the drive. Few of my games constantly gave me DREs and now that's not really an issue.

Just as a matter of interest, I assume you can't just plug any old hard drive into a 360, it has to be a special Xbox one right? Also, can you get external ones and run two at the same time?

I believe you can use USB hard drives with the 360 if they're formatted correctly, but only for media. You can't use external storage for XBLA games or anything similar.

Otherwise, no, you're stuck with the proprietary HDD that docks on the side of the console. It seems irksome, but I'm not even close to filling the stock 60GB drive.

Well I've got 7.5Gb left on mine. It was a premium pack, I forget how big the HDD is in total. It's still enough storage for game saves and expansion packs but not really enough to be installing games on so I was thinking of upgrading it. I don't store any media stuff on it anyway (Having a 500Gb hard drive attached to my laptop in the same room) so I don't need more space, it'd just be nice to cut down the loading times on games like Last Remnant a bit.

Get the Arcade with the drive seperate. Same price as the Pro, but this way you get the extra accessories. Trade in the extras afterwards.

But the short answer: regular XBOX games will require the drive space.

Yeah, just picked up a used 20GB drive for uh, kinda cheap... the original games start right up. Thanks! WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Additional information: The 60GB drive comes with a 3-month free Live Subscription.

The Pro system is useless.

Gotta buy a headset on top of that though, which is a ridiculous thirty bucks. Depending on deals and bundles it might be a better idea to get a pro with the 60 gig drive and headset. Plus, pretty sure the arcade still comes with a wired controller.


oh, and don't forget the chrome disc-drive, man. that's, like, totally worth the money

I don't think he cares about the headset.

Plus the arcade comes with a wireless controller now.

I don't see the appeal of an Xbox if you aren't going to use Live. But that's just me I guess.

And holy fuck, the arcade is a great deal now. When I bought mine as a replacement I just got the console and a wired controller for 350 bucks.

Ain't just you. I couldn't agree more if I tried. Live is pretty much the selling point for me, and I imagine a lot of folks here. But 'eh. To each their own I guess.

Hopefully he'll get to co-op some of that stuff locally. H3 is a much better experience that way.

No kidding. Luckily, I believe, there's a handful of games that allow you to play online with a silver account. Nothing really that exciting, but hey, he should look them up and give it a test run. Or just use a 48 hour trial. Because I've seen a lot of people get a box and say "not going to bother with live" and in a couple months they're total xbots and on live every day.

Might as well just get it over with.

Actually, there's a thing where Silver members can play a few arcade games online this month without having Gold.

UNO, Bomberman, and HD Remix are the only things really worth it. I don't think anyone plays Aegis anymore and the Hardwood games are jokes, so.

Also pretty sure (but not 100 percent) that the cross platform stuff that was made free to play on the 360 when Games For Windows Live went free this summer was a limited time thing.

Even if it wasn't, Shadowrun and Lost Planet aren't really worth playing online anyway, so.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking of. Except maybe a tad shittier than what was in my mind. Though online Uno is good for laugh, so that's worth it at least. And maybe Bomberman if it isn't horribly laggy still like it was when it came out.