The recently announced “Xbox 360 Slim” (Hate the ‘slim’ bit, will get to that in a moment) was announced recently by Microsoft, and although deep down it’s still the same console, it’s looking like one great improvement.
First of all, the design – it’s a much sleeker, edgier and smaller design, but it’s hardly slim, especially when you go and compare the original Playstation 3, to the Playstation 3 slim, that is infact slimmer, this new Xbox not so much, AND it’s gamers that have started calling it ‘slim’ not MS themselves, so why not think of a spiffy name for it real quick Microsoft so people don’t keep calling it slim.
It’s cooler, YAY!, as in fans, not trends, yes, we’re all hoping and praying this could be the end of The Red Ring of Death now that the new console is packing a better fan, it’s also one big large fan now instead of two smaller ones which, brings me on to my next plus…
It’s quieter! The Xbox 360 is possibly the loudest console ever made, I mean, it sounds like a plane is taking off when you turn it on, no other console has ever been as loud as this and hopefully no other console ever will be. The new console is supposedly “whisper quiet”, it’s apparently as quiet as a PS3, hope so! but, we shall see.
Built in wi-fi – It’s hard to believe the xbox 360 has never had this, but now, it finally does, my only problem with this is the fact i’d already wasted £50 on the official wireless dongle for the 360 which, now becomes unwanted, a bit like memory cards; more about that later.
More memory – The new console has a 250GB Hard drive and more USB ports, it now has 5 USB ports instead of the regular three, the more the merrier!
“Kinect ready” – When it was announced that this console was Kinect ready, people weren’t sure what that meant, well now that Microsoft has cleared this up we have a few more details, basically, if you have a current gen Xbox 360, you will require a separate power source for your Kinect system, but if you have the new console you won’t – Bonus.
The only downfall I can see with the new console is they have completely dropped memory cards (there is no slot for them) in favour of using USB sticks, this wouldn’t have been so bad apart from the fact most of us have already spent £30-40 on a memor card for our systems.
The new Xbox 360 is out on my birthday (woot!) the 16th July and will be priced at £199.99 which, is the price of the current generation of Xbox 360′s (another bonus).
Have to say its a definite improvement from Microsoft, the inclusion of wireless should have been there from the start like it is in both the Wii and the PS3. By the way, the WiFi is 802.11n compliant so it can handle greater network speeds than either of its competitors.
And you now longer live in fear of the RRoD, instead you have the RDoD (Red Dot of Death) to look out for as that is the new error signal for the box, but hopefully the main cooling issue from the original design should be a thing of the past. I have heard reports of it once again chewing through discs if you move the console whilst it’s operating, but if you do that you kind of deserve to hear the grinding noise it makes.
All in all its a good, solid move from Microsoft and seems to be bringing in a new customer centred thought process, instead of charging excessive amounts for peripherals that should have been included in the first place. Even as a PS3 owner I have to applaud them.
Comment by AsproJR — July 1, 2010 @ 12:41 pm
Just been informed by GAME that my new Xbox may be shipped early to arrive before the proper launch date, I hope so!
Comment by Cg — July 9, 2010 @ 4:27 pm