Welcome to the post-Ipod era of consumer electronics. First thing’s first. Don’t even bother with the “Core” system. They don’t even call it the Premium system on the webpage anymore, it’s just the Xbox 360 system and the Core Xbox 360 system. The Core comes in a green box so make sure you’re leaving the store with a white box or you’ll wind up eventually spending more than the $100 you save getting the core.
The system is surprisingly large, it’s a few inches smaller in all dimensions than the original Xbox but easily takes up 90% of the original Xbox’s volume. The ability to stand it on it’s end and the double concave style makes it looks smaller but don’t go resizing your AV rack. The power brick is enormous. It’s about the size of a box of Girl Scout cookies. Fortunately the cords on both ends of the brick are long so you’ll have room to stuff it behind the furniture.
The color for the 360 is mighty white. It’s not eggshell-blinding white, but it’s a lot cleaner than your normal computer case beige. Yes, you can change out the faceplate, but that doesn’t change the stark white sides of the 360, so unless you’re always looking at it head on there’s going to be a discrepancy seeing a different faceplate on the system.
The controllers are awesome. Relatively light, they’re all wireless all the time. You can’t buy a wired 360 controller. The controller is powered by 2 AA batteries (included in the system and if you buy an extra controller) that are placed into a carrier and snapped into the back of the controller. It’s a great system that protects the battery contacts and doesn’t require a lot of forcing. You can also buy a rechargable battery pack called the “charge and play” pack that plugs into a USB port like an Ipod to recharge. The charge status of your controller is shown with a little cell phone battery gauge on the left guide page.
The controller itself is well laid out, very similar to the “S” controller of the previous Xbox. The two big differences are the awkward white and block buttons are replaced by left and right buttons that sit above the triggers. Having a different feel between the triggers and the buttons makes it so much easier than figuring out the L1 L2 R1 R2 of the playstation controller. The second major change is the center “guide” button now works. Pressing it takes you to a common system page for all games that I’ll explain in another article.
The console itself is very clean looking. The ports in the back for power, AV, and networking are recessed and lock securely into the back. It’s very easy to organize the cables off the back for a clean look. The front has the DVD tray, two ports for memory cards (which you won’t use because you’ve got a hard drive snapped into the top of the console) and a small flap covering 2 USB ports for your charge and play packs or to plug in your Ipod or PSP.
The coolest feature right out of the box is the capability for the system and the controllers to be turned on and off by the controller itself. Pressing the guide button on the controller wakes it up, then it will send a signal to the sleeping 360 and wake it up too and off you go. Both the console and controllers have 4 green LED arcs around the guide button to easily show who’s player 1, 2, 3, or 4 when you have multiple controllers in the house. To shut everything off you just hold in the guide button instead of tapping it to bring up the right guide panel and then you select Shutdown to power everything off.
More to come about the interface, the new Xbox Live, and oh yeah the games too.