360 as gift for friend

Darkewolfe

A buddy of ours is moving away, and as a "stay in touch" gift a friend and I are going to buy him a 360. Since we are not made of money, we were thinking of either nabbing a used Gamestop console or a new Arcade system. I know buying a used 360 could be slightly risky, but is it TOO risky?

If we're buying new, I want to make sure I get him the newest chipset. What was the way of figuring that out?

Lastly, aside from a hard drive and a wireless controller, what would be important accessories he'd really want?

MushroomStick

Isn't it cheaper to just buy a pro than to buy everything separately for an arcade?

Darkewolfe

It might be cheaper, but this is a going away gift to get him started with the 360.

So, we picked it up. The box says arcade comes with 256 MB of memory. I assumed it meant a removable memory stick, but we can't find it anywhere. Is it on board or somethng?

Hedgethorn

The newest Arcades do indeed have 256 MB of internal memory, rather than a removeable memory card. Unfortunately, if you want to go on Xbox Live, the NXE takes up over 150 MB of that memory.

Darkewolfe

Hedgethorn wrote: »

The newest Arcades do indeed have 256 MB of internal memory, rather than a removeable memory card. Unfortunately, if you want to go on Xbox Live, the NXE takes up over 150 MB of that memory.

Touche, Microsoft.

Sonar

Apparently the Arcade is the only version you can be guaranteed to get the new "less likely to red ring" chip set.

ilmmad

You can check on the box if I remember, I just forget where.

But buying a pro is a much better idea because it has a hard drive.

MushroomStick

There's a number on the power supply you can check to see if it has the newer chipset. Something about the new one using less power.

ascannerlightly

one must-have accessory is the plug-n-play charger & battery pack for the wireless controller. without it that thing goes through aa's like a mother.

Synthesis

It might be my own perspective, but I think OP is overestimating the 'risk' of buying an Xbox 360. That being said, every console I've purchased in the last seven years (with the exception of my PS2) still works, including my 3-year-old Xbox 360, and I've lived through horror stories of various consoles failing (Red Rings, Bad Blu-Ray drives, etc.)

You might want to consider getting him a second wireless controller, or barring that, an older (and less expensive) game he'd like. But given the cost issues, I think your friend would be quite happy with just a console, a HDD, and the free month of Live Gold that comes with it.

Darkewolfe

Synthesis wrote: »

It might be my own perspective, but I think OP is overestimating the 'risk' of buying an Xbox 360. That being said, every console I've purchased in the last seven years (with the exception of my PS2) still works, including my 3-year-old Xbox 360, and I've lived through horror stories of various consoles failing (Red Rings, Bad Blu-Ray drives, etc.)

You might want to consider getting him a second wireless controller, or barring that, an older (and less expensive) game he'd like. But given the cost issues, I think your friend would be quite happy with just a console, a HDD, and the free month of Live Gold that comes with it.

Yeah, no, he got an Arcade. That's all we were buying him. I have my own 360 which has already red-ringed out and been replaced. I was just wondering how to determine the chipset, as well as what additional purchases he'd probably want to make initially.

Orogogus

http://giftguide.toptenreviews.com/?p=2721

If the sticker on the back says 12,1A, it's the newest chipset, the Jasper.

When I got my 360 around New Year's the accessories I picked up were:

1. HDD + extra controller (there was a deal going on at the time)
2. Xbox Live Gold 12 month + 1 card (don't want to give MS my credit card info)
3. Component cable (Gamespot brand, because they conveniently didn't have the cheaper MS ones in stock)
4. Headset
5. Play and Charge kit

I don't know that the Play and Charge kit is really necessary. If I still had my fancy-schmancy LaCrosse battery charger I wouldn't have bothered, but I lent it out along with about half my battery stash.

EDIT: Has anyone swapped a non-MS hard drive into their 360? I wish I had enough space to install more than 1 game at at time to the HDD, but I get a little angry every time I think about how much they charge for their tiny little hard drives, and even angrier when I start considering buying XBLA content. Is there any risk of the account being banned after a HDD swap?