Advice on XBOX 360 please

consumers_revenge

Its my sons birthday soon and he wants an xbox 360 ( not begging, whining etc so happy to look into )


Now I can see theres a 4GB version and a 250GB version.


Is the 4GB version any good? Primarily he just wants to play Minecraft. I've heard that you can also add usb drives ( 16gb ) to get around the space limitation.


He wont be going online with it for now.


Any advice please?


Thanks.


CR

DCFC79

4GB might be big enough for Minecraft, I don't have the game to tell you more I'm afraid, as he gets older he might play more games which will eat into the added storage 16GB or it might be 32GB.

jbainbridge

We have the 4GB version and it seems to be used mainly for Minecraft or FIFA ... works fine. If the storage becomes a problem I'll add a disk myself.

Krojan

Spend a little more and get one of the 250gb one, the 4gb ones while short term are suitable for the needs you mention, once your son starts getting a greater collection of games, perhaps gets xbox live and or downloadable content you'll pretty much need the extra storage, and the xbox 360 can only utilize a max of 32gb storage via usb flash drives or external hdd's.

In the long run you'll save money as you can't just pop any old 2.5" sata hdd internally and expect it to work like you can with a ps3, microsoft pretty much force you to buy their own massively overpriced "branded" hdd's for use with the x360.

Some forums report you can get some 3rd party hdd's to work by flashing them, but doing this to a brand new (albeit cheaper non branded) hdd will (likely) invalidate the warranty (of both the hdd and the xbox) and there's no guarantee it'll work, and they require a proper mounting bracket case to sit properly and securely inside the console.

At the time of writing the official 250gb hdd is between £65-80 (depending where you shop) and very difficult to find in the high street, for the sake of an extra few £ for long term peace of mind, get the 250gb one.

PenguinJim

Krojan wrote: »

Some forums report you can get some 3rd party hdd's to work by flashing them, but doing this to a brand new (albeit cheaper non branded) hdd will (likely) invalidate the warranty (of both the hdd and the xbox) and there's no guarantee it'll work, and they require a proper mounting bracket case to sit properly and securely inside the console.

No, this absolutely, definitely, 100% will not invalidate the console's warranty. But it's still not worth doing, because...

Krojan wrote: »

At the time of writing the official 250gb hdd is between £65-80 (depending where you shop) and very difficult to find in the high street, for the sake of an extra few £ for long term peace of mind, get the 250gb one.

Times have clearly changed in the few hours since you posted, as there are several new 250GB 360 HDDs (for the 360 Slim) at Amazon, fulfilled by Amazon, between £31 and £32.15 - about the same as the 320GB HDD.

As the others say, get the 4GB and later weigh up whether USB storage (up to 32GB) or the HDD will best suit your needs.

(Unless the 250GB model is only around £20 more - then that gets my vote! )

Ant555

How old is your son and are you buying it 2nd hand or brand new?

A quick look on Amazon just now shows brand new 500Gb version cheaper than the 250gb version for some reason.

If your son is of an age where online is on the horizon then I might avoid the 4gb version. There are regular updates that have to be installed to play online and these eat away at the limited memory. My nephew bought a 4gb version 'just for minecraft' but once the attraction of playing online against school friends etc became a reality he is really struggling and has to regularly delete things - its just a bit of a faff.

So, for me, the question would be how likely is it that the XBox will be online?
A usb disk can be used up to 32Gb in size so this might be enough.

We just upgraded to an Xbox One but my 250gb xbox 360 was purchased second hand from Game a few years ago. Some people have mixed experiences with Game but I had excellent service from them. I spoke to the Game employee asked about the warranty and what was covered, could I bring it back if it went faulty etc, I asked him to pick out the best one from his stock. I think I got 12 months warranty on the item although I am not sure if its still 12 months for 2nd hand items.

Just before Christmas I sold my 250gb Xbox 360 for £100 with a load of games.

Hope this helps

consumers_revenge

Thanks for all replies


Tescos did a new 500gb with fifa 15 thrown in for 159 so buying that. At least I'll get the clubcard points :-)