[Gaming] The Late Great xBox Part. III (fin)
So this past weekend (Saturday) to be exact during another grand day of 99+ degree weather around 2pm in the afternoon I received in the mail a letter from Best Buy Services regarding my PRP.
It was a simple one page letter with a Best Buy gift card attached, the letter had a few paragraphs and a section with the amount $399.99.
Zen baby!
So later that afternoon I braved the one hundred and two degree weather to head on out to a local Best Buy to get my replacement 360.
Before departing I had noticed on the Best Buy website that there were still available at a few of their stores the Xbox360 Elite Holiday Bundle, which they discontinued (sometime during the summer) so it’s now the same price as the normal Xbox 360 Elite ($449.99). However included in the bundle is a copy of Marvel: Ultimate Alliance as well as Forza: Motorsport 2.
On my way to Best Buy I ran into some horrible construction work (doh!) so it took a bit longer than I had anticipated but you know, I still made it (eventually).
When I got to Best Buy I walked towards the video game section in the back and grabbed a new wireless controller (pink) for the Bunny as well as a pink and a black rechargeable battery pack for each new controller. (The Xbox 360 Elite comes with a wireless black controller, but it only comes with two Energizer batteries.)
I asked a “sales associate” if they had any more of the Xbox 360 bundles as shown on their website since I didn’t’ see any in the case. “Actually I think I just saw two this morning, let me check.” The “manager” type wearing the white shirt told me as he went to grab a rolling staircase to climb.
. o O ( WTF!? )
I then looked up on the top of the massive shelving and noticed that all the boxes up there were Xbox consoles… where a treasure trove of Xbox Elites sat, one stacked atop the other. There were a few of the others but it seemed Best Buy was well stocked on Xbox 360 Elites.
After about twenty seconds on top (don’t laugh) the white shirted Best Buy warrior located what I was looking (again no laughing).
As we were walking towards the counter he asked me about the Best Buy PRP plans and if I was interested, I actually cut him off and told him that’s why I was there today and that you’re damn right I’m getting a new one.
At the counter the girl rang me up, I handed her the gift card I had received earlier after which I owed approximately another $200. (+$50 for Elite console, +$50 for Wireless Controller, +$80 for Best Buy PRP, $11 for Wireless Rechargeable Battery Pack (pink) and $15 for Wireless Rechargeable Battery Pack (black).)
After I paid up she bagged my items, then I was outie five thousand.
When I returned home I hooked up the new ‘Box.
First unpacked all the included items:
- Xbox 360 Elite console: The console is equipped with an HDMI port, HDMI cable, a black wireless controller and black Xbox LIVE® headset. It also comes with three powerful core processors, 16:9 cinematic aspect ratio, anti-aliasing for smooth textures, full surround sound, and DVD playback with upscaling capabilities right outof the box.
- Xbox 360 120GB hard drive: The huge 120GB detachable hard drive allows gamers to save their games and store television shows, movies, music, pictures, trailers, extra game levels, demos and other content available from Xbox LIVE Marketplace. Also sold separatley.
- Xbox 360 Wireless Controller (black): The sleek black finish of this high-performance wireless controller matches the style of the Elite Console. It has a range of up to 30 feet and a battery life of 30 hours on two AA batteries. Also sold separatley.
- Xbox 360 headset (black): Now available in black, the headset lets you strategize while playing together online or trade taunts with your opponents. You can also send voice messages to friends on Xbox LIVE.
- Xbox 360 HDMI cable: New to Xbox 360, HDMI lets you get HD video (up to 1080p) and multichannel surround sound, all from one cable.
- Xbox LIVE Silver Membership: With this, gamers can chat with friends online, collect achievements and gamerscores, send and receive voice and text messages, and access Xbox LIVE Marketplace content such as game demos, HD movies and TV, as well as the best in downloadable games from Xbox LIVE Arcade.
- One-month subscription to Xbox LIVE Gold: An Xbox LIVE Gold Membership provides a complete online entertainment experience. Subscribe to this premium service and engage in competitive online multiplayer matches, tailor your matchmaking via feedback and accomplishments, chat with more than one person at a time, and take advantage of unique privileges in Xbox LIVE Marketplace and Xbox LIVE Arcade.
I plugged in the power cord (A Major!–j/k), plugged in the HDMI cable, set the console down on the packaging box (since I don’t have a media center stand) and then powered up.
After deleting some of the included demos from the new box and configuring the network settings I powered down and detached the included hard drive (which contains one hundred and twenty gigabytes of space and is also black incidentally). I then attached my old twelve GB drive (from my previous console) and then powered back up. I had also inserted my sixty four MB memory stick that contains all of our profiles into one of the front ports as well.
The issue now was that my user profile has to be logged into Xbox Live for any other user to use previously purchased content.
But wait there is a license transfer option that you can use one per twelve months which you can find here. Essentially since all of your purchased content is tied to your console, and not the hard drive if you get a new console your content can’t be accessed offline. This process however gives you the opportunity to transfer from an old console to a new one and not have to deal with those pains, which is especially nice when you have multiple users in a single household and don’t want any mischief possibly taking place regarding your Xbox Live account.
For more detail the Xbox 360 Content License Restoration FAQ can be found here.
There is just one catch.
You must now re-download all of your previously downloaded content for this to work.
=-|]
This would be no big deal if I didn’t have over two GBs of Rock Band downloads as well as another GB of miscellaneous content, and lest we forget that if you are logged into a controller when in Rock Band it’s going to expect your are playing, even if you aren’t so just logging into Xbox Live with your primary account for another user is not a solution.
Booooooo!!! Cat calls….. Booooooo!!!
Perhaps I’ll get to that at some point. [sigh]
[rewind] You might be wondering why I put my old drive on my new system and detached the brand shiny, new, sexy, sleek 120GB drive. Well, because the Elite Console does not come with a transfer kit.
What’s a transfer kit?
The Xbox360 Hard Drive Transfer Kit is a cable which enables users to move data from one hard drive to another. This cable can only be purchased separately or with a 120GB drive upgrade (which runs approximately $180).
Why don’t I just put my new drive back on and re-download all my purchased content and not worry about transferring my previous data?
Because of my saved games, yes saved games all of my saved games would be lost. And Homey don’t play that.
Fortunately Microsoft does currently allow for a free DTK however you must send away for it.
You can find the form here, you will need to know two things prior to submitting the form (which can also be faxed). One, the serial number of your previous console and two the serial number of your new console.
I sent mine in this morning via fax, we’ll soon see how long that takes.
This might all be a moot point if I had a 512MB memory card with which to transfer each of my saves over to what essentially amounts to one chunk at a time or if I was so inclined to attempt it with my 64MB card.
The problem with this scenario is that I’d have to attach my old hard drive, move saves to the memory unit, then detach the old hard drive attach the new hard drive, move the files from the memory unit to the new hard drive then rinse and repeat.
Needless to say that’s just way too much time and effort for me so I’m pretty sure I’ll be waiting for the transfer kit to show up.
On the brighter side of things…
I did spend some time this weekend with the copy of Madden 09 Collectors Edition that I had pre-ordered and look forward to spending more time with it soon. In a word it’s “redicutarded” how good this football game is.
[SideNote: One of the achievements in Madden 09 is titled Steal Their Thunder and has T.O.'s mug as the picture. :rofl: ]
But back to our “story”.
In the future I won’t have to deal with the same situation I had this time but I now know the following:
- Best Buy PRP: Despite what they tell you don’t buy a hard drive to send back, just keep yours and don’t sweat it or buy another console and transfer right then.
- Best Buy PRP: Don’t ship your return to them any faster then they are going to pay for, it doesn’t make your gift card get to you any faster.
- Best Buy PRP: They have fifteen days (business style) to get your card out to you. [And they'll probably take that long.]
- Best Buy PRP: They’re website will list your status as “PAID” when they issue your gift card, just an fyi.
- Best Buy PRP: It’s worth it.
- Xbox360: They fail a lot. Microsoft’s repair and warranty service is sub-par, get a 3rd party service contract.
- Xbox360: The Elite version is the cat’s meow.
- Xbox360: The license/DRM scheme Microsoft employs in certain circumstances is not user friendly (though no DRM ever is, it’s not designed to be… hence “management”).
- Sony: My television does not appear to support 1080p through HDMI, only through its component connections. [weak]
So I guess overall the experience was a good one, except for being without a console from the 24th of July to the 16th of August. I’ll definitely purchase future PRPs for consoles and such when I purchase them through Best Buy.
Also I’ll keep you all updated on the data transfer situation, since technically I’m not really back up and running like I was previously.
Take care and one love.
- zay
