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General discussion

Xbox life is a total laugh and a waste of time

Nov 29, 2010 5:57PM PST

Hi,

I have owned my xbox 360 since it first came out. Here is why they are a waste of time.

I got the Red Right Of Death after I purchased it, just after the one year warranty expired. I had to pay to get it repaired, which is cool, and it was fixed. But it was a huge inconvenience and a waste of time however I got over it.

I then began to get into xbox live. I had to set up a hotmail account and go through the long process of updating my console. I then realized, I had to actually pay for the xbox live service on top of my internet fee's. Why? If you already pay for internet then why should you pay for a subscription? However I payed for that as-well, and had to deal with constant laggy game servers, and my xbox saying that the NAT is set to moderate, and I could not join some games.

I was beginning to get irritated by the nagging inconveniences. When gears of war two came out, the readily put the DVD into the console. After I did that and played the came for an hour the laser burned the disc and I can no longer use it.

A month after that occurred Microsoft in New Zealand brought out this fantastic new update. It prevented anyone under the age of 18 download ANYTHING from the xbox live market place, YESS, even the G rates stuff. I am 17 and cannot download G rated games. I rang Microsoft and they confirmed this. In order for me to play live and download stuff, i will have to set up a new hotmail address and new gamertag, hence loosing all my game data.

How fantastic.

The console itself is garbage. Its noisy and slow.

Live is a profit making scam, as it is very slow, even though I have unlimited download speed and bandwith,

you have to pay for the subscription and expensive accessories to get the 'most' out of it.


Hence why I turned to PC gaming. Cheaper, hassle free if you know what your doing, and better performance.

Theres my rant,

cheers guys!

Discussion is locked

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Well
Nov 29, 2010 10:35PM PST

Well, for starters, it costs a lot of money to run the Xbox Live servers and all those game servers. So companies may decide they don't want to eat the tens of thousands of dollars a year it costs to keep those going, and expect you to pony up your fair share if you use them.

There are plenty of examples in the PC world of this as well. World of Warcraft probably being the single most visible example. You have to pay a monthly fee to continue playing that game. That's on top of an Internet connection and whatever else.

Laggy servers might just be a result of you living on a tiny little island that is New Zealand. When you figure the total population density of the nation, then figure only some small percentage likely own a 360, and only some small percentage of that are on Live, and then only some small percentage of those people will be playing the same game as you... Well, it's all about location, location, location. Even if the servers were fairly close, geographically, like Australia or Japan, you'd still be looking at having to use a trans-pacific cable, which will have limited bandwidth that EVERYONE has to share.

I don't know anything about the change to the Live service in your area you talk about, but my guess is that it's a parental control thing. Or the NZ Parliament passed some law mandating the change.

Second, I highly doubt the laser did anything to your gears of war disc. I know in science fiction films people have lasers that can cut through anything, but the reality is any laser powerful enough to even damage a DVD, would probably require a power supply about as big as the 360 itself. Lasers are just a single, focused, light beam. To ramp up the intensity on them that they could actually damage anything, with current technology, requires a massive power source.

Now, there was an issue with some 360s that caused them to scratch discs and make them unplayable. It happened most often if you shifted the orientation of the console while it was turned on.

Accessories have always been the money makers for almost everything. Consoles are sold at a loss. It's only now, about 5 years in, when Sony and Microsoft are breaking even on production costs. A business can't stay in business forever if it keeps losing money.

And I think you'll soon find that consoles are quite a bit cheaper. PC gaming is a never ending upgrade treadmill. Some new game coming out may require a better graphics card, and darn if that doesn't mean you need a new power supply. Then maybe you need a faster CPU, which in turn requires a new motherboard. Maybe the new motherboard doesn't support your old DDR2 RAM, only DDR3, so now you have to get all new RAM. Sooner or later you're going to run out of HDD space, so there's another expense.

Consoles are great. I buy one, and every game with the logo of that console on it is guaranteed to work. I just pop the disc in and go. No marathon install sessions, there may be some patching marathons since consoles have picked up that nasty habit from PC gaming, but I never have to worry about whether or not my video card is up to the task, or if I have enough RAM. One console, and every game for that console is guaranteed to work.

Granted Microsoft did have some pretty serious manufacturing issues with the Xbox early on, and they bungled the handling of that situation at pretty much every turn, but later models have been much improved. Even if you had to buy 2-3 360s at the original retail price over the 5 year time period since it has been available (maybe a bit less in your region), you'd probably still come out ahead financially compared to PC gaming.

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Wrong
Dec 3, 2010 10:58AM PST

PC Gaming is cheaper,


I spend $1000 on my pc,

I do not have to pay extra for live, or repairs,

I have spend alot of money in advance for 3 graphic cards, x# 8800gts,

I shall not need to upgrad for aanother good 3-4 years,

as far as im concerned its cheaper

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Doesn't seem like it to me
Dec 3, 2010 9:45PM PST

Doesn't seem like it to me.

So you spend $1,000 for a computer now... What happens when in about 3 months some new game comes out that is beyond the abilities of your current graphics card? Well, there's another probably $150 minimum. That is over a year's worth of Xbox Live service. Then what happens when you later need some more RAM? That's another say $50, which is about another 2 months of Live service. Eventually you're going to need a new CPU, and conservative estimates on that cost would be say $200, which is probably about 2 years worth of Live service.

All of this is ignoring the fact that Xbox Live service is OPTIONAL. I, for one, don't even use it. I much prefer single player, or just playing with a friend. Doesn't matter the game or the online service, online gaming is always overrun by two types of people. The people who have absolutely no idea what they're doing, and the people who spend 14 hours a day, 7 days a week, playing this game. So you either get people who are no challenge at all, or people who's entire life is spent perfecting their skills at this game and make it frustrating to even try.

You are comparing two very different things, flipping back and forth between up front and reoccurring costs depending on which supports your view at the time. You conveniently ignore the need to upgrade a gaming system, almost perpetually, and focus in exclusively on an OPTIONAL online service for the Xbox. When you actually do the breakdown of the figures, you'll probably find that console gaming is quite a bit cheaper. More of your money goes to actual games, not supporting the infrastructure.

You will also find, I suspect, that PC gaming lags just the same as Xbox Live gaming lagged. Simple fact of the matter is that you live on a small island in the Pacific. That means bandwidth going in and out of the island is going to be limited. And don't expect it to remain free to play PC games online for very long. Running those servers costs a lot of money, and companies aren't going to want to shoulder that cost alone for much longer.

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Listen!
Dec 4, 2010 5:11AM PST

Listen,


I have spend over $1000 on a computer that has hardware that is greater than the xbox. I have a better graphics card than the xbox 360 has. I infact have more memory and ram than the xbox 360 equivalent.

So what happens in three years time when, lets say, 3D gaming comes into the market and all systems needs a new GPU,


Hold on a seconds,

360 users = buy a new 3D gaming console

PC Users = Slip in a new 3D GPU


Odviously that was fallacious, but my point is I wont need to upgrade for a few years yet, because my PC out performs the 360. If a new graphics card comes out offering a new scene to gaming, I would only need to upgrade, and not purchase a complete new console,


Thanks

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And again
Dec 4, 2010 5:16AM PST

Sorry,


but what happens when a game comes out beyond the abilities of the xbox 360?

Im PC gaming however, if you purchase the best card on the market, there is no need to upgrade. My computer can run crysis, full setting 100%. Crysis is the BENCHMARK of PC gaming,

due to this the developers only made this for PC due to it wont be able to perform well on the 360.

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Regarding the CPU
Dec 4, 2010 8:37AM PST

I will not need a new CPU. It has lasted me 3 Year, the intel q6600.

If i remember right, I had brought doom 3 on the pc mabey four years ago. I loaded it into my computer and the performance and graphics were amazine, beyond what my old play station 2 could even think of producing at that time. I them brought my mate a copy of doom 3 for his original xbox. The graphics suddenly looked 5 years old on the original xbox in comparison to my computer,

Over the course of 5 years of OC and xbox gaming I have only needed to upgrade twice. First time I diddnt know what I was doing and spend $400 with cheap upgrades, then I realised ill spend $1000 of a new computer that will last me at least 5 years.

Hence why I am playing crysis on PC when its not even released on the 360,


Im finished here,

happy gaming