Ammut

Sure $10-15 doesn't seem like that much but with 70 Million 360s sold to date any additional costs rack up pretty quickly. If you were promised a huge cash bonus for cost savings if you were in charge of the development would you throw in components that might be useful down the line or keep the money to yourself?

That $15 could also be put towards a slightly better cpu/gpu for a better peak performance upgrade. More Ram to have room to breathe is nice for developers but with consoles they can optimize the code better for with specific builds.

@Asurastrike said:

My gaming PC has 8GB of RAM. Runs everything perfectly.

I doubt you would notice a difference in any games at the moment if you cut it down to 4 unless you have a high end i7 and dual $250+ video cards on a demanding game.

@mordukai said:

@ValiantGrizzly said:

Those things lose their charge in like three minutes. It's crazy.

Also, I hope MS takes the Sony route with the next console and just lets you charge them out of the box without having to buy an expensive charger kit for each controller.

And lose revenue from accessory sales?! You're forgetting it's MS we are talking about it. The company that makes you pay for services that are otherwise free or already paying for.

Sony stopped charging for multitaps, network adaptors, and memory cards going from ps2 to ps3. They made crazy money off those so its not a stretch to think rechargeable batteries might be standard on the next xbox. I'd rather have replaceable packs than built onto the controllers though... I like the option of just swapping battery packs and continuing wirelessly over having to plug in or switch controllers.

It's almost as if Sony and microsoft switched positions on nickel-and-diming customers this generation. Xbox had network, hard drive, and 4 ports built in whereas the Ps2 did not - but the Ps3 had wifi, hard drive, and battery packs built in where the base 360 didn't.

@mordukai said:

Sony did a better job designing their hardware overall. If you open up a launch PS3 and a launch 360 side by side you can see Sony used every inch of space they had available to them while MS kinda threw pieces together.

I think failure rates are a much better way of determining how well hardware was designed... and yes, the 360 is terrible in that regard. I'm not sure what you were trying to get at with how a system looks once open or how dense the electronics are packed but in my opinion the wii would win in this regard.

Right click volume icon on bottom right -> playback devices -> Digital Audio (HDMI)

Or something with a similar label.

Right click that and set it as default device.

Huzzah?

The best memory I have from live 1.0 is the time I spent playing Halo 2 after the live servers were "officially" cut off - anyone still in Halo 2 was not booted and could continue using the service if left on. It was great coming home to see if it was still working and getting a bunch of games in with the newly formed community of holdouts. Numbers dwindled down as time passed and although I was extremely disappointed when my 360 froze, ending my time with it, I was grateful I got to have so much fun with Halo 2 one last time.

How could you forget these gems... my favorite is Lei-Feng's

Just... what?

@Seastalk said:

I doubt it would have cost Polytron $40,000 to push a patch. But sure lets all jump to conclusions based on hear-say.

40K is a lot, I was under the impression Microsoft allowed 1 free patch then 10k a patch after that. Most recent source I could find after a quick google search shows $40 000 is correct (if you believe what some guy called Tim Shafer has to say...)

I had a similar issue just weeks after launch... my save file was lost. As much as I love the game I probably wont finish it now, starting from scratch and redoing it just wouldn't be much fun.

@TobyD81: Weird, if all other games work its likely just a bad couple of discs.

@bombedyermom: clearly you have not experienced the amazingness that is Chu Chu Rocket.

Trials Evolution

New player made tracks year round, fun multiplayer.

Hell, its about time.

Look forward to playing this the day it is out. I am a little worried the original music might not make it in though... licensing and such. Would also like widescreen support but not holding my breath.