So I purchased a 360 elite today.
And now I am mad.
The Elite is a nice system, and an absolute upgrade for people who watch a lot of movies (as it upscales Standard DVDs over HDMI), or just plain want a digital picture output for their swank HDTV. So I bit the bullet and upgraded this weekend to the new hotness. I used a friends transfer cable to move all my stuff to the new hard drive (thus making it impossible to move my saves and content back), booted it up, and checked out the picture quality.
Fucking night and day. It was beautiful.
So, after seeing that, I check and see if my friends' profiles can play my Live Arcade or DLC... turns out they can't. It's not surprising; same thing happened when I got a refurb'd 360 from Microsoft a while back, and they worked with me by giving me points to repurchase the content onto my new system.
Here is where it gets shitty.
Unlike a broken console, where they will give you codes to rebuy your stuff, Microsoft REFUSES to give you the means to carry over your console license for the DLC and Live Arcade games to the Elite.
Their policy is a such:
Digital licenses for downloaded content are tied to both your console and gamertag and they do not transfer when you move them to a different hard drive. That means if you download an XBLA game or television show from the Xbox Marketplace on one console and then move it to the new 120 GB HDD, you will have to be signed onto Xbox Live to access that content. An offline Xbox 360 will not play purchased content that has been transferred from a different console.
What this means is that unless my profile is connected and is the primary profile on the 360, all 200-300 dollars of my DLC either does not work, or is a demo. My friends' save games of oblivion are now unplayable, and the most popular live arcade games the be played (often when I am not) can't go beyond the demo mode.
So I talked with the rep and checked to see if there was ANYTHING he could do, as I was pretty damn upset. I asked him if he wanted me to respend 300 dollars just so my friends can use my system the way they could before I spent 500 more of of moneys to them today, and the guy had the audacity to say "yes, thats what you should do."
They build a system that allows (and ENCOURAGES) multiple profiles, with one for each user. But they do not let you share your games with other people.
The guy on the phone said to me that "But YOU are the one who paid for the game, why should they be allowed to play it as well?"
At which point I told him that I was also the one who bought Gears of War... that doesn't stop me from letting a friend play it on their profile.
This issue has solidly shaken my faith in the live arcade.
I have called Major Nelson, and have sent him a corresponding email. It wasn't scathing, but I made it clear that a solution for this issue would be good.
Also, I am not buying stuff off of Live arcade until a better solution exists. I was this services biggest fucking proponent on here, back when mcc (and others) thought I was on crack for thinking it was going to be a good thing. And despite all the great titles and the fun I have had with it, I am going to flat out ignore the DLC and new releases until they get their heads out of their asses and realize that their licensing scheme is screwing good consumer whores like myself in such a fashion that it is causing me to close my wallet.
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If I heard wrong, then yea, that's bullshit.
Also, it's retarded that people can't get the transfer cable separately from the new 120GB drive. How are the good, nice consumer whores who "upgraded" supposed to transfer stuff to their new Elite models?
Hey, at least Microsoft gave you the option to tie your live arcade games to both your 360 and your account seperately. I'm really pissed off that a certain other system doesn't even let you make accounts to tie your micro-purchases to.
What do you call painfully clear? I didn't know about it, and I spend a good chunk of my day reading about this sort of stuff. How do you expect the average consumer to not get pissed off?
So "painfully clear" is a misnomer. A Big sticker on the box warning people that they shouldn't buy the elite to replace a premium or core unless they plan on rebuying all their shit would be painfully clear.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
From just one of the various news agregrates (I'm sure others covered it just as much) :
http://www.joystiq.com/2007/04/26/joystiq-hands-on-xbox-360-hard-drive-transfer-kit/ There were a bunch of other Joystiq links that just linked back to this FAQ instead of restating it, for example like this : http://www.joystiq.com/2007/04/27/xbox-360-elite-qanda/
Microsoft's page on this :
http://www.xbox.com/en-US/support/systemuse/xbox360/console/datamigration.htm is in bold for those of us who don't like reading lots of words.
Also, I think the Elite itself was a mistake of Microsoft's. HDMI + 100 extra gigs is not worth $20 less than a PS3 model that no longer exists. The Elite actually convinced me the PS3 wasn't too expensive, but then Sony stopped making the cheap one, so whatever.
Now when you say night and day you are using hyperbole, right? I have a 720p/1080i 40" Samsung LCD running VGA for the 360 at a resolution between 720 and 1080, no idea why but it only shows up proper like at 13somethingX768orsomthing. ANYWAY HDMI isn't really going to show that much improvement, is it?
Have you seen what both outputs look like on the same monitor?
Yeah.
What is different for me at least is that the colors are MUCH punchier, and the lines are better defined. It's that whole digital image thing.
Actually, i am going to assume a decent profit. They were making 70 bucks on the premium per unit, last I looked... so with only an HDMI cable and a different hard drive happening here, I am assuming they are making at least that much.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
I now have 2 Wiis. I'd like the option of being able to log into that account - verify my purchases and play. Same goes for the PSN and XBLA titles.
Either that or we go back to the old SimCity code wheel approach. That was rad.
...
Best guess, fuck no. The HDMI port can't be more than a few bucks at most, and the bigger hard drive, while costing more, isn't probably that much more. At best guess, they make $75 on the non gimped 360. There is no way that the bigger drive costs them that much more than the smaller one. I bet they are making at least as much on the Elite. Probably more if they are ordering the new drives in a quantity large enough to replace the 20GB line.
My roommate has a Wii. I don't. There are so many virtual console games I haven't bought because I won't be able to transfer them when I do buy a Wii.
Anyone have a PS3? How does that track your purchases?
The reason the original 360 couldn't is because the last step on the video chain before the cable port was an analog scaler. This is what allowed the 360 to run anything at any resolution (something the ps3 lacks). However, this means the outbound signal was anolog.
There is a digital scaler in the elite that does the same thing, and you can get an HDMI to DVI adapter.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
With that in mind, it would make sense for them to do an DRM loosening update. Now that they're actually making money on one thing...
!!!
Stop hoarding! The gaping maw of Ebay demands a sacrifice!
So there is absolutely no hope of them making an HDMI connector on the normal 360? Because I have a 720p LCD panel, currently the 360 is hooked up through VGA, but my TV has an HDMI port and I'd like to free up the VGA port.
Damn man, that really sucks. Hopefully you can get the issue worked out somehow though.
I couldn't really tell from your post but is all of your downloaded content completely gone or is it altered in a way that your friends can't use any of their save files?
For my friends, all the XBLA games are in demo mode, and the DLC is inaccessible. This means that any savegame reliant on the DLC (read: Oblivion) is now locked out. So I will have to explain to a friend that I just killed his 40 hour save.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
I won't say NO hope... but it's unlikely.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
But there's no way it could be digital, and thus wouldn't offer any improvement? That's lame. I thougth the connector on the back was supposed to be able to output anything, I guess it was just PR speak?
I suppose the change is permanent too huh?
there should be a more elegant way of handling it that isn't "well you just own half the license" or this
i don't see why, with the transfer cable, the two HDDs/360 can't just transfer the license as well.
Syndalis is not trying to con you out of money Microsoft. He's the last person likely to do so.
Do it with chocolates.
PSN: SirGrinchX
Oculus Rift: Sir_Grinch
Man, if somebody lost (any of) my (many, mostly level 20+) Oblivion save(s) , I would literally stab them (in the throat).
As much as I hated Steam when they started doing it, you have an excellent point. You pay for the games, not what they are playing on. If your computer dies, you're not screwed when you want to boot up City of Heroes on a different machine. With game saves on any other system, it was a matter of putting them on a card and then it just worked (even Gamecube got that much right).
If you don't want people sharing content, don't make that option available from the start. Don't just after the fact say, "Sorry, you're screwed!"
Wii Code: 1040-1320-0724-3613 :!!:
Shit I didn't know a cable like that existed.
Checking monoprice, is this what you have?
Buy some useless stuff at my Cafepress site!
Well it's clear that it's painful.
ba dum pshhhhh
Probably. DVI and HDMI are pretty much the same thing with a different shaped connector (although HDMI has pins for audio and DVI can do dual-link for hunourmous monitors).
Stop spreading FUD. HDMI is not any better than component. It's just a dvi cable with integrated audio and DRM.
What you are thinking of is DVI. HDMI is not any better than DVI when it comes to picture quality; both are digital, both output the exact same 1s and 0s to the display device... DVI can't carry the DRM token you are talking about for both video and audio, wheras HDMI can.
Also, if you have an HDTV that has DVI/HDMI, but no VGA input, this is the only way to use the 360 as an upscaling DVD player.
What you have said is exactly the same as saying that there is no visual difference between VGA and DVI for your computer; we all know THAT is bunk, so why is upgrading from an analog video signal to a digital one on the console any different?
Let's play Mario Kart or something...