Against my better judgment I traded in my old, perfectly functional 360 and picked up the new hotness. I did this for a few reasons, mostly having to do with the new “S” model’s higher storage capacity and built in Wi-Fi. The prospect of having a game console that didn’t sound like a jet taking off also appealed to me. Using GameStop’s trade in deals, I only ended up paying about $100 for the whole thing, so all in all not a bad exchange.
Like we’ve seen in the various press shots of the new 360, the glossy black finish does look very nice and it bears more than a little resemblance to an Alienware computer with both its colors and its hard, angular lines. One thing I have against the new outer design is that the pressure sensitive buttons to turn on the system and open the disk tray are very, very touchy. I barely brushed the power button with my finger and the whole console turned off while it was loading a game, so that might be an issue playing Rock Band at rowdy parties. It’s also pretty astounding how much smaller the new console is compared to the old one. Without the massive hard drive jutting out the side, the new 360 takes up a very small space on my floor and looks positively puny next to my old PS3 “fat”. Microsoft’s new console features a lot more fans than the last one, the most noticeable being the giant port on top of the box, taking up almost half of the surface.
Continue reading Thoughts on the New X-Box 360